Indian textile is (finally) having its moment

We’re on the Kolkata Centre for Creativity the place I’m attempting to sneak an image of a block print of cultural icon Begum Akhtar on a shirt. Its wearer, Mamta Varma, runs Bhairavi’s Chikan in Lucknow, with 300 girls who do tremendous chikankari embroidery. Noting my curiosity she reveals that the bizarre shirt was made by Meeta Mastani, co-founder of Delhi-based printmakers Bindaas Limitless, to commemorate the singer’s a centesimal birthday.

A number of toes away, the inimitable Darshan Mekani Shah, founding father of Kolkata-based not-for-profit Weavers Studio Useful resource Centre, factors to a gold-and-black cotton sari lined in hand-woven motifs of earrings. “This can be a dul [earring in Bengali] jamdani,” she says. “There are solely two of them that we all know of. One belonged to the late Ruby Ghaznavi [activist and a pioneer in the revival of traditional Bangladeshi jamdani], and right here is the opposite.”

Massive ornate paisleys sit resplendent on both nook of the pallu. As a bunch of collectors, historians, curators and journalists peer intently on the sari, Shah continues, “It’s of a really excessive thread depend, takes ages to weave, and requires distinctive talent. We’ve got tried to fee one other one, however the unavailability of tremendous yarn and zari, or simply the sheer artistry and talent that’s slowly disappearing, is making it tough.”

Shah is the mission director of Textiles of Bengal: A Shared Legacy exhibition. The textile revivalist’s journey started over 34 years in the past when she met Japanese collector Hiroko Iwatate, and began honing her sensibilities in the direction of excessive requirements of supplies, craft and design. In 2020, she set in movement plans for a multi-year in-depth research of Bengal’s little-documented textile historical past, and this exhibition is its first public expression.

The opening weekend symposium noticed consultants resembling British scholar Rosemary Crill, Italian ethnologist Paola Manfredi and writer Pika Ghosh lead talks and walks. “The concept was to collect museum curators, collectors, and textile and artwork historians on a shared platform to deal with the many questions on the provenance, historical past, geo-politics and insurance policies associated to the textiles of undivided Bengal and fill within the gaps,” she says.

“These gatherings are as a lot about celebrating historic textile traditions as they’re about studying from historical past and taking the conversations ahead. integration, respect and recognition, and being true to the narrative and sharing that, is crucial.”Darshan Mekani ShahFounder, Weavers Studio Useful resource Centre

Curator Mayank Mansingh Kaul, in the meantime, walks 12 of us by way of the survey exhibition with round 120 artefacts from the seventeenth century to the current — consultant of the completely different traditions of weaving, embroideries, printing, and tie-and-dye. He factors out patron textiles that have been commissioned for royalty, resembling a gossamer tremendous angrakha with the Awadh coat of arms, prayer caps lined in tremendous chikankari, Haji rumal, an embroidered material that weaves collectively spiritual rituals and inventive resilience, and complicated kantha work.

Mayank Mansingh Kaul

We cease at a size of Dhaka muslin with woven motifs that many collectors of Bengali handloom saris could be conversant in. The sampler is a up to date recreation of motifs resembling fulwar (flowers organized in straight rows), kalaka (paisley), tesra (diagonal patterns), and panna hajar (thousand emeralds) that date again tons of of years. A few girls within the group are carrying Dhakais and, to our collective delight, the identical patterns grace their saris. “That is precisely why such survey exhibitions are essential,” says Kaul. “Textile practitioners are impressed to breed what they see, and a variety of the historic textiles are usually not accessible to everybody. Most of them are locked up in museum archives or with non-public collectors.”

Conversations are going mainstream

2025 has solely simply begun, and the Kolkata exhibition is one in every of a number of textile-related occasions taking place throughout India. The final couple of months have seen Sense & Sensibility, a textile gallery on the annual Uncooked Collaborative in Ahmedabad that narrated design historical past in textiles; the continuing Floor in Jodhpur, which highlights embroidery and floor elaborations; TAPI’s When Indian Flowers Bloomed in Distant Lands that tracked commerce textiles throughout 700 years; Pehchaan: Enduring Themes in Indian Textiles at New Delhi’s Nationwide Museum, amongst others. March will see textile collector and revivalist Lavina Baldota’s Pampa: Textiles of Karnataka, below the Sutr Santati’s banner, scheduled in historic Hampi, with many others ready to unfold within the subsequent few months.

Sense & Sensibility at Uncooked Collaborative

Textiles have entered their standard period. Even because the business, India’s second largest employment producing sector, is getting authorities help (see field inside), heritage weaves have gotten central to style manufacturers and the frequent man. Now not are phrases like thread depend and weaving clusters recognisable solely to collectors and retailers; they’re a part of on a regular basis vocabulary. Lots of that is because of exhibitions and initiatives by textile patrons and lovers.

“Exhibitions assist create consciousness, however the true affect depends upon what comes subsequent. Whereas artisans themselves might not all the time be at these occasions, the publicity can nonetheless result in significant change — whether or not it’s inspiring designers to work extra intently with craft clusters, or encouraging shoppers to make extra knowledgeable decisions. These conversations assist maintain textiles and craftsmanship within the highlight, which over time can result in tangible alternatives.”Gaurav GuptaClothier

Till lately, any critical dialog about Indian textiles would reference the Vishwakarma sequence of exhibitions of the Nineteen Eighties, curated by Martand Singh — as a result of it was simply so distinct. At present, nonetheless, curators resembling Kaul, Baldota, and Lekha Poddar (founding father of Devi Artwork Basis) are rewriting that script. “This engagement with the weavers and the walkabouts finally translate into one thing extra aware for conventional textiles,” says Rasika Wakalkar, one of many delegates on the symposium, and the founding father of TVAM, a not-for-profit that works with the wealthy textile traditions of the Deccan. “There’s a direct and oblique affect on the ecosystems being revived and recharged, by way of such discourses.”

For example, in 2023, TVAM and Maharashtra’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, had organised Kath Padar – Paithani and Beyond, at Paithan. The traditional city — as soon as a bustling hub of commerce, and famend for the paithani sari, with its jewel tones in tremendous silks — had buzzed with the footfalls of tons of of holiday makers, a lot of whom have been weavers seeing historic textiles from state museums and personal collections for the primary time.

Kath Padar

“Trend in India remains to be evolving, however each area has its personal textile. We’ve got a lot room for each state to have exhibitions that talk to their histories, round their identification and textile traditions. If achieved proper, India might have the perfect textile museums on the planet. Symposiums assist the textile business and play a really huge position within the textile financial system and the dimensions of manufacturing.”Sanjay GargDesigner and founder, Uncooked Mango

Exhibitions encourage innovation

Producing new audiences is among the essential aims of those initiatives, states Kaul, who has curated 20 main textile-related exhibitions previously decade, together with Kath Padar. “In India, nearly everyone has a visceral connection to textiles. For each Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata, there are actually exhibitions in tier-two cities resembling Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, to even smaller cities resembling Chirala in Andhra Pradesh, Anegundi in Karnataka, and Paithan in Maharashtra.”

He’s additionally seeing an exponential rise in engagement at these numerous occasions. “Exhibitions encourage innovation, which isn’t doable with out taking a look at historical past. There isn’t a different nation on the planet that has this sort of range in textiles, historic materials and up to date follow. And these initiatives are alternatives to construct requirements of excellence and consciousness.”

Ahalya Matthan, a textile patron and founding father of The Registry of Sarees, a analysis and research centre primarily based in Bengaluru specialising in handspun and hand woven textiles, is of the identical accord. Again in 2015, her initiative #100sareespact had kickstarted curiosity on social media. Folks used the hashtag to share pictures of themselves carrying saris on Instagram and Twitter, and to speak about their love of the weaves. Later, in 2018 and 2022, her exhibitions, together with Meanings, Metaphors in Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Chirala, and Pink Lilies, Water Birds at Anegundi, each curated by Kaul, have been revelatory.

Ahalya Matthan (far left) along with her group

“In Chirala [2018], the venue was an 8×20 ft classroom in a authorities boys faculty, with partitions lined in fungus. We painted them white, put beige chatais on the ground, and confirmed three textiles every day over 9 days,” she recollects. “I’ll always remember what Surya Babu, a weaver from Srikakulam, wrote within the guests’ guide. ‘Till I got here right here, I felt like a labourer. Now I really feel like an artist,’ he wrote in Telugu. The easy act of displaying plain hand spun, hand woven lengths of textile one way or the other gave the weaver dignity. The affect of such exhibitions, particularly in smaller centres, is immeasurable.”

Matthan remembers a weaver from Benaras who studied a Venkatagiri sari at size at ‘Pink Lilies…’. He spoke about how he wouldn’t have the ability to reproduce the weave in Benares, because the Venkatagiri vocabulary is completely different. “However he discovered a zari we have been searching for and helped us arrange a loom at Venkatagiri, the place he and an area weaver have been capable of reproduce that sari. I name this alternate of pehchaan and experience,” she provides.

Pink Lilies, Water Birds
| Photograph Credit score:
Pallon Daruwala

Artisan within the image

Whereas the price of organising textile exhibitions may be fairly excessive, as curator and textile revivalist Baldota places it, “It’s nothing in comparison with the worth we can pay if nothing is completed. No amount of cash will convey again the craftsmanship and talent that can disappear within the subsequent 5 years if we ignore it.”

Lavina Baldota
| Photograph Credit score:
Frozen Pixel Studios

Baldota’s Sutr Santati is an try and increase the scope of textile exhibitions from being restricted to patrons and the elite to turn out to be, as an alternative, a repository of data for everybody. The revivalist, whose household belief, Abheraj Baldota Basis, works with weaving clusters close to Hampi, has taken the exhibitions to Delhi, Mumbai and Melbourne, Australia. And now, with Pampa, she is bringing business tastemakers nearer to the supply, all the way in which to Hampi. “Textile has turn out to be a favorite medium for artwork, even internationally. With Pampa, Textiles of Karnataka, I needed to convey consideration to Karnataka’s wealthy handloom custom. Exhibitions resembling these are usually not solely about wanting again at historical past, additionally it is about wanting ahead and creating new work,” she says.

Sutr Santati

“The height of this curiosity in textiles — not simply within the design business but in addition in scholarship — is what we’re experiencing now, blurring the traces between craft and artwork”Yash SanhotraCurator and researcher, MAP

On the flip aspect, nonetheless, handloom revivalist Uzramma states that almost all symposiums on textiles are directed at outsiders. “In my expertise, there’s a better want for organising symposiums and conferences amongst handloom artisans, a lot of whom have been finishing up intensive analysis and experiments in cotton farming, decentralised modes of spinning, pure dyes and dyeing processes, and textile designing.” On this regard, her Malkha mission — which goals to hyperlink farmers, spinners, and weavers to one another in order that they turn out to be a neighborhood of producers — has been “unweaving its position as an NGO, to weave as an alternative a Handloom Data Commons the place artisan students are invited to share their data”. 

400 million contributors

Again in Kolkata, Varma and I are discussing the 300 girls embroiderers at Bhairavi’s Chikan. A sizeable quantity for certain, however as professor Ashoke Chatterjee, former director of the Nationwide Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, informs me, it’s only a tiny fraction of the artisans in India. “Although there isn’t a official knowledge on what number of artisans there are, I’d peg it at practically 400 million. No different business can match the contribution that artisans and crafts can and do make to the Sustainable Growth Objectives [the 2030 agenda adopted by all United Nations members in 2015 as a shared blueprint for prosperity],” he shares.

Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy

Chatterjee has labored with the Indian authorities on the economics of the nation’s craft sector, and was the honorary president of the Crafts Council of India (CCI) for over 20 years. He calls the overall apathy proven in the direction of craftspeople a disaster of ignorance. However, he holds out hope. “Scholarly symposiums are important. The conversations there’ll give rise to a delicate understanding of the sector and spotlight problems with social, political, religious and environmental justice, and fairness,” he believes.

“Exhibitions have nice attain. And social media has improved the livelihoods of many artisans. International and native communities are instantly connecting by way of social media with the creators, eliminating the necessity of middlemen.”Pankaja SethiTextile researcher

Textiles are intently interwoven into our tradition. From patrons keen to spend lakhs of rupees to fee a heritage sari to center class households who maintain expensive that one extravagant marriage ceremony ensemble that’s been handed down by way of the generations, textiles will all the time be related in India.

It’s additionally why Darshan Shah will not be fazed by the doom and gloom narratives of disappearing craftsmanship. “The numerous occasions round textiles deliberate for the months and years forward will encourage change. As a result of the artwork and craft sector in India is resilient. It has survived for hundreds of years and can reside on lengthy after you and I are gone.”

With inputs from Crew Journal.

The Textiles of Bengal exhibition is on until March 31 on the Kolkata Centre for Creativity.

The author is a contract journalist primarily based in Coimbatore.