Popular textile revivalist, cultural advocate and founder/president of Kadambari — a city-based non-profit promoting performing arts and crafts — Chandra Jain is all set to present River Weaves, an exhibition on banaras brocades at the Bangalore International Centre, this weekend. With over three decades of experience in India’s craft revival movement. Chandra has combined scholarship, advocacy and grassroots action to revive handloom textiles across the country. We catch up with her ahead of the exhibition to find out more…
What inspired this exhibition?
The inspiration behind River Weaves: Brocades of Banaras stems from a deep, personal and long-standing engagement with the banarasi weaving tradition, a legacy that is both exquisite and endangered. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a quiet erosion of this craft. Master weavers have aged, younger generations have stepped away and the encroachment of chemical dyes and mass-produced textiles has compromised not just quality, but also health and environmental well-being. The exhibition was born out of the need to respond to this concern with beauty, care and urgency. It is an invitation to reimagine handloom not as relic, but as art that needs both revival and preservation.
How did the idea finally come together?
The seeds for this exhibition were sown years ago, through years of work on the ground with weavers, designers and dye experts. But its form crystallised through an intense period of curation and collaboration with Siddhartha Das and Chiara Nath, the co-curators from The Siddhartha Das Studio, who helped translate lived experience into a public, immersive narrative.
We spent months exploring not just textiles, but the ecosystems around them, dyeing practices, environmental impact and stories of generational knowledge. We then crafted an exhibition that is both historically grounded and urgently contemporary. The final exhibition from August 15-20, is more than a static display. It is a sensory journey that echoes the meandering river Ganga, interspersed with pauses of wonder, reflection and insight.
What are the textiles we can look forward to?
Visitors will encounter a thoughtfully curated selection of banarasi brocade textiles, including saris that are not just beautiful, but meaningful. They represent both traditional mastery and bold revival. There are pieces woven with age-old techniques like kadwa and dampach, featuring motifs that are fast disappearing from active use. A standout feature is the collection of saris dyed using natural, plant-based dyes, a practice that had vanished from Varanasi for over 125 years. These include turmeric, madder (manjishtha), pomegranate rind, parijata and indigo as not just part of India’s dyeing lexicon, but elements of Ayurvedic well-being. These textiles offer a layered value, not just aesthetic, but ecological and ethical.
Is there a theme running through the exhibit?
Yes, the central theme of the exhibition is revival and preservation – both of the craft and also the environment. Preservation of the community, the river and the craft — this idea flows through every textile, every story and every design decision within River Weaves. We see textiles here not just as fabric, but as carriers of memory, tradition and healing. Each brocade becomes a thread connecting past to present, soil to skin, artisan to wearer.
Do run us through the event. What can one look forward to?
Visitors can expect a visual journey that includes archival material, process documentation and weaver testimonies. The exhibits of banarasi brocades, including natural-dyed saris. There’s also a monograph accompanying the exhibition that delves deeper into the themes of craft, wellness and revival. There will also be immersive storytelling that bridges aesthetics with sustainability, in the form of daily curated walks at 12 noon & 5.30 pm. You can also look forward to a panel discussion on Handlooms — Past, Present and Future on August 15 at 11.30 am with Laila Tyabji, Ratna Krishna Kumar, Nandita Das and I, moderated by Shoba Narayan. Also, there will be a living textile tableau by Prasad Bidapa on August 17, among many other events.
Finally, what are you working on next?
The exhibition is not the end point, it is a call to action. We are currently working on expanding the reach of natural dyeing among younger weavers, equipping them with knowledge and confidence to take this practice forward. Ultimately, we want this to ripple outward, to inspire buyers to choose mindfully, policy makers to invest wisely and younger artisans to believe that heritage is their future.
Entry free. August 15 - 20, 11 am to 8 pm. At Domlur.
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