Textiles carry life within them. They bear emotions and histories in their weaves. The feeling of reassurance that most of us have experienced when resting our heads on our grandmother/mother’s lap while the starch of her crisp cotton sari pampered our worries away is proof enough. While the silks and velvets may rustle up memories of grand evenings, the humbler fabrics of the soil bring on memories of warmth and the smell of the earth.
The world art often conjures up visions of beautiful paintings and sculptures. Paints and stone are however not the only mediums that artists have used to put forth their visual statements. Many artists (mostly women) have been drawn to textiles as a medium perhaps because of the flexible and meditative nature of textile making. With National Handloom Day on August 7, let’s look at some of these brilliant artists.
Mention textile art and the first Indian artist that comes to mind (if you know a little about art beyond the Mona Lisa and our very own Ravi Varma), is the late sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee. Challenging conventional methods of sculpting, Mrinalini experimented with natural fibres like jute and hemp, weaving forms with dyed and knotted fibres. Her sensual and primordial deity forms were not only rooted in native history but were also a tribute to rural arts.
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Priya Ravish Mehra was a textile artist and researcher who vociferously championed the ancient Indian art of darning called Rafoogari through her art practice. Keenly observing the rafoogars in her childhood, who mended torn clothes by matching the weaves, her interest soon turned into a passion for making this technique visible and giving it a place in history. Battling cancer in her later years, she found solace in this form as she likened the act of repair to a damaged fabric to what her own body was going through.
Not happy with oil paintings reigning supreme in the realm of art practices during her student days, Bengaluru-based artist Lavanya Mani decided to work with sewing and embroidery, which were traditionally considered as crafts and often marginalised and dismissed as a hobby in the world of contemporary art. Finding a similarity between the textile dyeing and the canvas painting process, she incorporated the process of kalamkari painting to make artworks that told its own tales. Skillfully addressing our troubled colonial history through her textile art, Lavanya cleverly uses cloth as her storyteller.
Late artist Nelly Sethna created historical tapestries that still stand as testimonies to the versatility of the medium of textiles. Even when diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, she continued stretching yarn and making wall hangings and textile sculptures, creating new designs to cater to modern sensibilities, until her body eventually gave up the struggle with the disease. Textiles are not just products that one rushes to buy to welcome festivities and make the most of announced discount sales. They carry legacies and ancient civilisations within their folds. Some of us may preserve them as heirlooms for posterity while the artists in our midst turn them into glorious works of art, dedicating their lifetime to this singular pursuit.
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