Zamthingla Ruivah Shimray

The kashan is a woolen sarong worn by women in the Naga Hills in India. Zamthingla Ruivah Shimray’s work Luingamla Kashan is an elegy for a friend in the form of a luminous red sarong. The patterns were re-worked over four years to evoke brutality, the joyful spirit of a young girl, and the path to justice. The sarong’s geometric designs condense history into insect metaphors.

Indian army officers murdered the young Luingamla Muinao in 1986 after attempting to rape her. They were immune from being tried by civil courts under the colonial-era Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958). Student groups and women’s organizations rallied to bring the case before the courts—four years later they won it. Shimray wove this kashan to commemorate Luingamla’s path to justice. The kashan enters living culture, with its story passed down through community memory and song. Today, it has spread across 232 villages, with over 6,000 women involved, who have produced more than 15,000 Luingamla Kashans.

Shimray also presents two new weavings in the form of kachons, large traditional shawls. These works speak of the eruptions of violence from 2023 to 2024 in Manipur, India. Woven into Rai-Mui Kachon, one can recognize street blockades and figures protesting, fighting, the burning of temples and homes, mob killings, and deaths. Rairā Kachon, on the other hand, stands as a veiled message, written in the language of form, color, and rhythm, waiting for the time to be revealed.

Shimray’s work has the potential to change how we think of art. It offers a path to something new: the future of abstraction, semiotics, the reinvention of forms of collaboration, and the possibilities of political art.

Text: Sumesh Sharma