This work by Indian artist Manish Nai is made from jute, indigo, and teak wood—three materials ubiquitous in India, where Nai lives and works. The jute is dyed with indigo and compressed around the teak sticks, employing a visual language that references Post-Minimalism and architecture, while also addressing concerns around consumerism and environmentalism in contemporary India. Embedded within Nai’s material choices are layered histories of labor, anti-imperialist struggle, and material culture that allude to South Asia’s links to colonialism and the institution of debt-based slavery. British colonialists wreaked social and ecological havoc on the population of Bengal by forcing farmers to cultivate indigo instead of the food crops required for survival and charged huge rates of interest to farmers on loans for indigo farming. Within Nai’s abstractions, loss does not occur. Rather, the intermediation of the artist’s hand conspires with the forces of time and gravity to compress the materials into objects full of emotion, sensibility, and presence.