SHEFALEE VASUDEV
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Dastkari hates Samiti
The new exhibitions find inventive ways to document the textiles of India
For decades, Gamchha has been an omnipresent presence in the Indian streets.
The traditional scarf, made from a piece of red and white checkered fabric, is used as a towel, a pillow, a turban, an eye mask and even an shoulder drapery, mainly by the workers’ classes of the state of Western Bengal and other regions of the country.
But an exhibition in the capital of India Delhi, which ended two weeks ago, highlighted the history of the ordinary fabric in a unique way.
Entitled Gamchha: From ordinary to the extraordinary, he showed more than 250 pieces of the short drape of 14 Indian states to show the variations of the scarf between the regions.
White gamchhas of the Kerala with colored pencil edges, those woven from Odisha Ikat to cotton from Assam “Gamusa” with red swans and large floral patterns, interpretations varied from hand to hand.
“The show aims to speak for a symbol of social equality that clothing can evoke, even after decades to be excluded from the speech,” said Jaya Jaitly, expert in the textiles, founder of the Dastkari Haat Samiti, an artisanal organization that presented this show.
The exhibition is part of a series of shows and efforts, organized in recent months, which seek to redefine our understanding of Indian textiles by taking it in new directions.
Rich woven bridges, patterned brocrations and complex Chintz to a range of less discussed textiles, India’s contribution to the world textile industry is unique.
But despite recognition, including in some of the largest museums in the world, its documentation has been exclusive and has not followed the contemporary practices of the industry.
So far.
Held by art and craft foundations and organized by researchers in collaboration with collectors and private museums, a certain number of new exhibitions trigger something of a renaissance within the industry.
Dastkari hates Samiti
Gamchha: From ordinary to extraordinary traces, the history of the humble garment worn in several Indian states
It is a gap compared to the most popular glamorous version of fashion – there are no Bollywood stars that were drawing the crowd opening the show or sponsored by sponsored. And sites are often far from major cities.
Instead, emphasis is placed on the distance from urban designers – most of which are trained in elite colleges in India and abroad – and bring local craftsmen directly into the fold.
These exhibitions lead to the “planned egalitarianism of technology” in the textile ecosystem, explains Ritu Sethi, founder of India’s Crafts Revival Trust. “Due to Instagram and other digital platforms, anonymity around craftsmen is also failing,” she said.
This was formerly a small community of conservatives and customers, has now grown up to include experts from various fields, including art and architecture.
Together, they want to take the history of textiles beyond its Vaillée richness – associated with the size of the palaces, and the finesses of ceremony and weddings rituals – to include various fabric manufacturing traditions and the people behind it.
The sculpture of a more inclusive contemporary identity is, according to the designer acclaimed David Abraham, a return and “a restoration of pride and value”.
“For the Indians, the relationship with textiles is deeply rooted. We express themselves culturally through colors, weaving and fabrics and each of them has a meaning attributed to it. These emissions reaffirm a value in our system,” he said.
Consider these instances. Textiles of Bengal: a shared heritage, exposed to Calcutta until the end of March, highlights the historical uniqueness of the textile traditions of Bengal Undié.
Fabrics and clothes that are never seen before the 17th century to now. There are cotton saris and dhotis (curtains carried by men) which present the famous traditions of hand weaving of the region like Jamdani, which continues to be a fabric still sought today. Then there are rare Indo -Portuguese embroidery and some haji rumals – religious fabric embroidered once exported to Indonesia and certain parts of the Arab world as hairstyle for men.
Weavers studio resource center
The haji rumals exhibited at the textiles of Bengal: a shared heritage
The program includes discussions and demonstrations of craft techniques as well as cultural performances – the dancer noted Pubnima Ghosh played during one of the sessions dressed in a sari Batik painted by hand. Batik involves drawings of drawings on the fabric with hot liquid wax and a metal object. The artists then use fine brushes to paint dyes in wax contours.
“The objective is to bring attention to the shared inheritance of Bengal with Bangladesh, whether textiles, techniques, skills and trades, as well as narrative stories, culture and food, despite changing geographies,” explains Darshan Mekani Shah, founder of Weavers Studio Resource Center, who holds the exhibition.
Elsewhere, the conservatives try to introduce a more nuanced understanding of the history of textiles in India, including the ways which has been influenced by more important social realities of caste and class struggles.
Weavers studio resource center
The dancer Purnima Ghosh (seated) played with a group of classical dancers dressed in saris Batik painted in the exhibition Textiles of Bengal
Take Pampa: Textiles of Karnataka presented by the Abheraj Baldota Foundation which ended earlier this month in Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among the hundreds of textiles exhibited, there was the embroidery work of the Lambanis, a local nomadic tribe; The Kaudi quilts created by the Siddhi community of the State, which traces its origins in Africa; as well as the sacred textiles designed for Buddhist monasteries.
Through these representations, the show tries to tell the stories of the nomadic, tribal and agrarian communities for which resilient survival was the leitmotif and the fabric a way of telling their marginalized experiences.
And it is not only a question of history – certain exhibitions also highlight the future of industry, because designers find new innovative ways to imagine traditional textiles in a contemporary idiom.
Abheraj Baldota Foundation
Many less known textile traditions have been shown at the Pampa exhibition: Textiles of Karnataka
For example, the recently concluded surface: an exhibition of Indian embellishment and surface embellishment like art, goes beyond clothing and interior decoration and highlights the ways that textiles are also used in paintings, drawings, artistic facilities and sculptures.
The show, organized by the Sutrakala Foundation and was held around a step-child in the old town of Jodhpur, presented a set of works of textile art manufactured by the famous contemporary painter Manisha Parekh.
These programs also play an important role in updating the history of textiles by documenting it rigorously.
“Even some of the largest fashion institutes in the country have no archives of our textiles,” explains Lekha Poddar, co-founder of Devi Art Foundation, who has supported nine exhibitions on textiles in the last decade.
Sutrakala Foundation
Indian textiles are known for their unique techniques
The recent project of Devi Art Foundation, entitled Pehchaan: Foaring themes in Indian Textiles, tried to fill this gap.
Presented in collaboration with the Delhi National Museum, the show presented an investigation into visual and material ideas that resumed in Indian textiles for more than 500 years, with the oldest exhibition ranging from the 14th and 15th centuries.
“How will young designers find inspiration for their work if they are not aware of their own history and have no visual references for that?” MS Poddar asks.
The success of these programs has rendered the organizers who hope for its future.
The next few years will be looking for this creative ecology, explains Mayank Mansingh Kaul, who has been conservative at 20 exhibitions of this type in the past 10 years.
“Slowly, we will build new audiences, collaborate more and push the next generation of manufacturers and practitioners to vacuum quality.”
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