‘Happenstance’: Showcasing artist Boshudhara Mukherjee’s meditative tapestries
In her new solo, artist Boshudhara Mukherjee takes her engagement with weaving and crocheting to a larger, more ambitious scale
The title of Boshudhara Mukherjee’s ongoing solo exhibition, Happenstance, at TARQ gallery in Mumbai, is a portmanteau of the words, “happening" and “circumstance". It alludes to random occurrences which, irrespective of whether they are serendipitous or unfortunate, carry the potential to profoundly inform our lives. “The artist believes that the circumstances in which her work comes to be is an organic and instinctive process," states the accompanying gallery note. This is 42-year-old Boshudhara’s third solo with the gallery in 10 years. Clearly, she has outgrown the earliest phase of primarily creating shredded-and-woven canvases, as seen in the first solo at TARQ in 2016.
An analysis spanning the past and current exhibitions suggests not quantum leaps or radical turns but a gradual evolution elicited by reflection. The works exhibited in this show are the outcome of layered dialogues between her past and present, and experimentation with material and colour. While she now uses cotton cloth from everyday fabrics as her foundation; in some of her works, she has added crocheting, open lace patterns, and even extruded nets used for packaging vegetables. Her hybrid creations now feel more like “soft sculptures" than “woven paintings" which they came across as earlier. Some of her earlier shredded canvases also make a low-key comeback, reused and embedded in some of her current larger works.
Boshudhara grew up in Kurseong, near Darjeeling. She started stitching and crocheting at the age of 5, often assisting her mother or grandmother. Later, while studying at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, painting, her area of specialisation, seemed to bore her. “It felt too static, so I always had the urge to do more to it," she explains. “That is when I started cutting my paintings. Sometimes it was also an emotional response to the work". But as a student, she could not afford to throw them away. “The next day I would be wondering what I could do with the shredded pieces—and then it came to me as a reconciliatory response—I could weave them."
The transition from canvas to fabric happened by chance with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic as the material was easily available for the Bengaluru-based artist at home. She found an intermediate option in denim because it closely resembled canvas in thickness and texture. “Once I shifted to cloth, there was no looking back. The range of colours and textures that became available, the durability, and the softer character that cotton offered quickly made it my preferred choice," she says.
Over the past few years, the hoarder in her has filled many cupboards at home with used bedsheets, saris, shirts, trousers and denims for future use. Each fabric has its own story. Some came from her grandmother’s sari collection; others were eagerly gifted by her friends and acquaintances. Each of them has a personal connection—she distinctly remembers the moments that motivated her to use a particular piece of cloth in her work. While there has been an uptrend in younger millennial fibre artists both in India and abroad, her work stands out for its refusal to engage with political histories and narratives and instead pursue personal contemplation detachedly.
Among artistic practices she discovered over the years, she has been influenced by Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui’s metallic, yet cloth-like wall installations and Colombian textile abstract artist Olga de Amaral’s large fibre works, and by the abstract expressionists in general. Molten (2025), a free-form piece largely in black with coloured strands, occupies the wall as one enters the gallery. Its amorphous shape and the criss-crossing lines make it resemble the schematic plan of a crowded urban agglomeration with its serpentine streets and key landmarks mapped out. The hung presentation is a dramatic transformation compared to the laidback sprawl on the floor of her home studio. Gravity has provided unexpected special effects with subtle changes in form now apparent since the installation. The bottom fringes have grad ually sagged under their own weight, spreading beyond the wall-floor line and stretching its three-dimensionality.
“When I start the work, the weaving is instinctively loose or tight based on my prevalent mood. This forms the foundation for the work which gets cre ated thereon," reveals Boshudhara. Beyond the physical effects of gravity, they also thus become an echo of the emotional ebbs and flows of her personal journey. In Trousseau (2024), the largest of all the works on show, this has interesting repercussions for the work, leaving some parts airy and mesh-like, while other parts remain dense and layered. The cotton-wick braids provide relief in thick white patches in contrast to the netting and the crochet-motifs. The treble crochet patterns she deploys in this as well as her other works resemble animal cell junctions, and like the latter, provide structure and stability to the work while allowing room for flexibility. Together, along with sections she has created by recycling older woven canvas works, they create intriguing tapestries of colour and texture that both draw you in for a closer look and nudge you to step back at the same time.
Primrose (2024), unlike the others, was made hanging from the wall. Here, she used her grandmother’s Dhakai cotton sari as the primary source material. While it would be considered sacrilegious by most to cut up such an emotionally charged family heirloom; for the artist, the decision was purely instinctive. “The sari called out to me to be used, and the tug was so strong that I felt compelled (to use it)." Equally, it repurposes the material physically to create new meanings, and breathes new life into inter-generational ties which would otherwise be archived and forgotten. Ultimately, in a world where people are fixated with seeking immediate gratification, Boshudhara’s weaves are an unapologetic ode to slowness.
Trousseau (2024), the magnum opus of the show that took her around six months to complete, exemplifies that idea. Her intricate, meditative weaves in the work also made me ponder about the interconnectedness of all beings, and the layered, unpredictable nature of relationships between them which evolve over extended periods of time.
At TARQ gallery, Mumbai till 18 October. Tuesday-Saturday 11am–6.30pm
Anindo Sen is an independent art writer.
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