Design Map · Eindhoven
Faggodry
Graduation project by Sarath Muralidharan at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Coming out is often treated as a necessary passage towards queer self-acceptance. ‘Faggodry’ questions this expectation through a queer reading of the South Indian mythology of Lord Ayyappa, proposing discretion not as an incomplete stage to overcome, but as a valid and potentially subversive way of being. The textile installation consists of three frames with varying degrees of opacity, resisting the demand that identity be made fully visible, declared and fixed. Fringes ordinarily trimmed away to produce neat edges are instead handwoven and reattached, extending beyond the frames like unruly vines. As the textiles escape the structures that contain them, they evoke the forest origins of the mythology and unsettle the boundaries of domestic order. ‘Faggodry’ creates space for forms of queerness that remain shifting, partially concealed and no less valid for being unnamed.