Design Democracy DD 2025, Hyderabad
Takshni's Muladhaar
At Design Democracy Hyderabad 2025, Takshni unveiled Muladhaar, a collection that delved into the relationship between language, craft, and cultural memory. The exhibition provided a space for visitors to reflect on identity, continuity, and belonging, emphasizing how heritage and tradition shape human experience and connect us across generations. The central philosophy of Muladhaar is that language is a vessel. Language carries the essence of culture, preserving stories, knowledge, and traditions. Through this concept, Takshni translated abstract ideas into tangible forms, allowing audiences to engage with their own connections to roots, tradition, and communal wisdom.
Mahabharat – Language as a Path of Understanding (Telugu)
Size : 7ft x 7ft x 0.25ft Material: Brass and Wood Edition: Exclusive Artist :Puja Swain Artisans: Saddam, Omveer | The Mahabharat begins as dialogue, a process of listening, interpreting, and responding. In Telugu, this dialogue found voice through the Kavitrayam, Nannaya, Tikanna, and Yerrana, who translated and reimagined the epic between the 11th and 14th centuries. Their work shaped grammar, prosody, vocabulary, and imagination, embedding the Mahabharat into the cultural fabric of the region. This retelling became an independent version, reflecting Telugu aesthetics and philosophy. Concepts like dharma and spiritual liberation remain, yet their expression shifts through Telugu’s structure, where subject and object precede action. This order asks memory to hold relationships before movement, offering holistic meaning. Language here becomes a path of understanding, a renewal that carries the Mahabharat as cultural rhythm and spiritual imagination. It is not merely translation but transformation, where the epic lives in the balance of sound, thought, and devotion, preserved as memory and rearticulated as Telugu consciousness. |
Language is a Vessel
Size :84' x 60' x 16' Material :Brass and Wood Edition :Exclusive Artist :Richa | This installation embodies Takshni’s belief that language carries knowledge systems. It invites reflection on how words, idioms, and phrases are repositories of cultural understanding and inherited wisdom. The piece encourages viewers to contemplate the responsibility of preserving language, not only as communication but as a way of sustaining collective memory. It underscores that identity, learning, and belonging are inseparable from the words we inherit, speak, and transmit. |
Jeevan Patra
Size :66' x 66' x 4' Material :Brass and MDF Artist : Puja Swain Artisans: Ashok, Nizam | Jeevan Patra captures the Gond tribe’s philosophy that life is about sustenance, care, and interconnectedness. The work explores the idea that humans exist in relationship with one another and with the ecosystem around them. It reflects the principle that every action contributes to collective wellbeing, emphasizing how cultural knowledge and ethical practices are embedded in communal life. The piece invites viewers to consider life as a cycle of giving, responsibility, and connection, highlighting the Gond worldview of reciprocity and care as central to human existence. |