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The Delhi Contemporary Art Week puts textile art in the spotlight
Summary
The seventh edition of the Delhi Contemporary Art Week showcases new languages in textile art while also focusing on personal histories and politics of identity
Textile art is all set to be in sharp focus at the upcoming edition of the Delhi Contemporary Art Week (DCAW). To be held from 31 August at Bikaner House, this annual event has been amplifying artistic voices and trends from the Indian subcontinent for the past six years. The seventh edition is no different. This year, the DCAW—organised by six like-minded galleries, all helmed by women—is not just looking at the revival of weaves, but at the many ways in which artists are creating sculptural, multimedia or even digital practices using textile to uncover layers of personal histories and identity politics. The exhibition, ‘Threads that Bare’, will see 14 artists such as Geeta Khandelwal, Udita Upadhayaya, Sumakshi Singh, Anoli Perera, Khadim Ali and Ruby Chishti showcase their textile practices.
The evolving art ecosystem
The event has grown exponentially since its inception—this year nearly 80 artists are participating in the DCAW. According to gallerist Bhavna Kakar, one of the co-founders of the annual event, the idea has always been to bring together all the stakeholders, from artists and galleries to curators, connoisseurs, students and young collectors, to see the journey that the contemporary art ecosystem has made in south Asia.
‘Threads that Bare’ is one such effort to show how the participating artists have pushed the boundaries of aesthetic in ways that would have seemed unimaginable a decade ago. “Through the manipulation of fabric, thread, and texture, these artists reveal not only the enduring beauty of Indian textiles but also their capacity to communicate profound stories and emotions in the language of contemporary art," says Kakar, who is also the founder of Latitude 28.
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Take the Quetta-born artist Khadim Ali’s monumental mixed media work I’m the Third Script 2 (171x54 in). Hailing from the Hazara tribe of Afghanistan, Ali, who lives in Sydney, negotiates and explores the loss and trauma that emerges from migration. His work, with its deep connection to miniature tradition and tapestry, is enhanced with the artist’s own understanding of the craft of carpet-making, which many Afghani refugees learnt in order to survive wars and calamities.
For DCAW, Ali’s embroidered work on cotton and silk fabric looks at the artist’s childhood memory—of his grandmother telling him stories from Kalila wa Dimna, a translation of the Panchatantra. The artwork then becomes not only a revisiting of the embroidery of the past but also memories of a lost childhood. These are then layered with his thoughts on migration, global climate crisis and environmental challenges, including the recent bush fires of Australia that impacted Ali.
In stark contrast is Kolkata-based textile artist Viraj Khanna’s hand-embroidered art, which offers a satirical take on our consumption of social media. His intricate works—some of them self-portraits—offer glimpses of the lives of people sitting in restaurants, working out in gyms, holidaying with families, or even dining with their pets. The titles of some of the works—Vapes for Lunch; My Nani Thinks I’m Veg; Dreaming of Papad, among others—are bound to put a smile on the faces of the viewers.
Besides ‘Threads that Bare’, DCAW features yet another group exhibition, titled ‘A Bold Step Sideways’, curated by Girish Shahane. It features deeply personal narratives by 18 artists. “The performative nature of social media has encouraged greater engagement with personal narratives… something [that is] reflected in ‘A Bold Step Sideways’ through intimate memories of and memorials for places and people," states Shahane, who has been invited by the DCAW as a guest curator for the third time now.
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According to him, personal narratives come together with the political through explorations of identity, race, caste, gender and sexuality. “These explorations have grown pivotal to the global arts discourse… signalling that the step sideways is not a step away from history itself, merely from a certain idea of art historical progress that was dominant for a hundred years," he adds.
Personal history in focus
One can see this being reflected in the work by Al Qawi Nanavati, based in Mumbai, centred around the loss of her parent or Berlin-based Sajan Mani’s imagery that recalls Dalit oppression wherein the artist, himself belonging to a community of rubber tappers, prints images from colonial photographic archives on rubber sheets.
“Loss transformed my art practice," says Nanavati who started making pulp for her art from her late mother’s clothes after she (Mumtaz) passed away. Grief inspired her to weave her mother’s memory into her work evoking a continuum of conversation and connection. Nanavati negotiates her grief by writing letters to her mother to feel close to her. As a result, these secret scripts also find their way into pieces of art.
Then there’s Vadodara-based Shubham Kumar, whose work is based on politics of land, construction, regional violence, and land riots in certain areas of Bihar. Images, ideas, and creatures from his native land operate as metaphors, through which he makes sense of the complex ideological narratives. Shahane also cites the example of US-based Tsohil Bhatia, who uses the camera to explore issues of the body, gender and sexuality while Jaffna-born Jasmine Nilani Joseph digs deep to look at dark issues of migration through her art practice.
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This edition of DCAW, powered by Blueprint.12, Exhibit 320, Gallery Espace, Latitude 28, Shrine Empire, and Vadehra Art Gallery, hopes to showcase diversity of subjects and media. It also makes a statement about how art continues to reflect and make bold statements on the times we live in.
Abhilasha Ojha is a Delhi-based art and culture writer.
