This installation is centered on a drawing which is sourced from a still from “Ghaire Bhaire” by Satyajit Ray based on Rabindranath Tagore’s book from 1916. The installation features the presence of cotton – from the handmade, to kala cotton (which is an indigenous seed to Kutch that is rain-fed and pesticide free), to the mill-made. Khadi is a metaphor for resistance and emancipation from colonial rule. Hence, these drawings are all made on khadi paper that I have made over the years since 2017, when I turned to focus fully on a studio practice. It was an important gesture and step for me to create my own surfaces for future drawings, and that these surfaces are inherently political. 

Three cabinets cloaked in mirrors hold folded textiles that include motifs from the Mill Owners’ Association Building (which is a key feature of the previous work “Mobile Palace”), as well as achadiyas used during the block printing process by the artisan-designer (Salemamad Daud Khatri) I have been working with since 2018. Some of these textiles have been treated in mirrors. Kutch has begun to influence me greatly, and the use of mirrors has become a key feature in my work. I am interested in how mirrors are used for both clothing and architectural decoration such as lippankam, and that body and space are united through this reflective, material that appears illusive and shifts perpetually creating light within cloth. 

With Library I, II, and III, I am celebrating the humble “kapad” or closet, that are like libraries of knowledge about textiles. The folded cloth are like spines of books, and I was inspired by seeing the closets of my aunts, cousins, my mother, my friends who are all share a deep love for textiles from various parts of India. I was interested in inherited knowledge, and how the women in my family have a reverence and appreciation for the skills and difficulty of weaving. In essence, I am interested in the transmission of knoweldge – from generational knowledge of one block printer to another – or from one mother to a daughter. 

“Vantage Point”, is a vinyl print of a collage that includes two block-printing tables reflected within each other. There is also an addition of a lippankam work that was made for the Indian Pavilion for Expo ‘67 in Montreal. It is a remarkable piece, and was saved by a local who has installed it in Le Taj restaurant on rue Stanley, downtown Montreal.