The Prestidigitation of Care: Colonial Knots, Contemporary Wounds

The Prestidigitation of Care (2026) is an original artwork accompanied by an extended artist statement that critically examines the enactment and governance of care within neoliberal higher education institutions in India. Employing embroidery and drawing on repurposed khadi, bandage cloth, machine-made lace, measuring tape, and a safety pin, the work adopts material inquiry as a mode of practice-based research. The selected materials function as conceptual agents, evoking repair, labour, measurement, and institutional control. Together, they interrogate the material, affective, and political dimensions of care within audit-driven cultures of contemporary higher education.