With her early career in art criticism, Anita Dube expanded her queries in the exploration of sculpture making through new modes and materiality. Her taste for the remarkable craftsmanship she inherited from her mother is seen in the artist’s discovery of velvet cloth as a medium of expression, an object of fetish and tactile desire. The installation Stone Mountain is made up of 365 pieces of stones draped in red velvet cloth, stacked onto seven layers of glass shelves creating a meticulously assembled mountain. She refers to the stones as “burning mountains bathed in the embers of the rising and setting sun.” Referring to shared memories and myths, around violence, freedom and love, conflicting material like stone and velvet construe a poetic tautness, speaking of indistinct lines between personal and collective experiences.  The velvet-clad stones are depictive of a prized gift, which is “azaadi” (the slogan of freedom with a massive mass appeal). Except a gift comes with a limited validity of time in which something in return in its place awaits. What can be higher in value than freedom other than the lack of it?