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Performance duration: one hour, 15 minutes.

UNWRAPPED is inspired by the Indian mythological story of Draupadi, the eternal virgin who was married to five brothers, as well as the true story of Bose’s grandmother’s marriage at age seven. Speaking to women’s rights to education and over their own bodies, the performance involves wrapping and unwrapping the body with a 216-foot sari covered with writing by women from Bose’s grandmother’s village in Bangladesh, an island battered by successive cyclones and being submerged under rising seas due to climate change.

This "endless" sari comprises 12 saris, each one painted, written on, and worn for eight months by 12 women who were denied education and married young but have learned to read as adults. The performance, part of the ongoing collaboration Storytelling with Saris, is a link to their bodies, creating a chain of sisterhood in support of female autonomy.

The performance ends in water, referencing both renewal and sea level rise. In South Asian culture, water symbolizes cleansing, death and rebirth. Draupadi bathes and becomes a virgin daily.

Unwrapped at (e)merge
2013