‘Sut te Saah': A phulkari exhibition that reflects the interior worlds of women

At Latitude 28, New Delhi, an ongoing exhibition features textiles, which carry traces of care, warmth, ritual and routine. These are part of the Sut te Saah: Stories Woven in Phulkari, a show presented by gallerist Bhavna Kakar and curated by Shreya Sharma. This rare showcase features over 40 rare phulkaris and baghs from pre-Partition Punjab, and from the Majha, Doaba, and Malwa regions. On view till 26 January, Sut te Saah draws from the collections of Amit Hansraj and Brig. Surinder and Shyama Kakar.

One of the most striking ones on display is a vibrant ochre chope from the late 19th-early 20th century, hailing from the Mandi Bahauddin district. A chope was usually offered by the maternal grandmother to a bride as she embarked on a new chapter in her life. The exhibition also presents rare Vari da baghs, usually started by a bride’s mother-in-law, or grandmother-in-law, at the birth of a son and completed over the years. An exceptional work is the Chattis Dabba bagh from the Malwa region, characterised by its grid-like structure and vivid colours. Also interesting is the Darshan Dwara, with its architectural motifs, created for presentation at Gurudwaras.

Each of these phulkaris and baghs reflect moments—big and small—in the lives of women, which rarely find their way into the annals of art and textile history. The three segments of the exhibition reflect these moments of transition in the domestic lives—Sankraman reflecting birth and marriage, Vishvaas ate Katha about faith, folklore and oral histories stitched into cloth, and Rihaish about domestic spaces where phulkari shaped women’s everyday worlds across generations. Together, the sections move from the material to the emotional and the historical, without insisting on linearity.

According to gallerist Bhavna Kakar, phulkari’s history dates back to the early 18th century, when these textiles signified a woman’s material and emotional wealth, much like gold passed down generations. “They were worn draped over the head on significant occasions, but their use extended well beyond the body. Phulkaris functioned as odhinis (head cloths), charpoy covers for honoured guests, festive hangings within the home, and as offerings to temples and gurdwaras, including coverings for the Guru Granth Sahib,” she adds. These textiles also stitch a portrait of a more syncretic time when women from different religions embroidered phulkaris and included them in everyday and ceremonial moments in an undivided Punjab.

Sut te Saah is the latest exhibition to be hosted at Latitude 28’s new home in Defence Colony, which opened to the public in October 2025. The show carries forth the ethos of this space by allowing for a more porous form of exhibition-making, one which makes room for a more intimate and layered reading of the works. Here, instead of presenting phulkaris as static artefacts, Kakar and Sharma have treated them as unique entities—vessels of time and touch. “The spatial design creates moments of pause, encouraging viewers to encounter the works at a bodily scale, much like these would have been encountered in domestic interiors,” adds Kakar.

The exhibition is a multilayered one, moving from the personal to the archival. First and foremost it is an ode to Kakar’s mother, Shyama, whom she lost to a terminal illness in 2024. Her mother did not simply inherit the phulkaris and baghs as possessions. Rather she acted as a custodian of these textiles, which travelled across generations within the family as vessels of care, ritual and continuity.

In bringing these works into a public exhibition, Sut te Saah offers an intimate point of entry into phulkari. The exhibition also includes selected phulkaris from the personal collection of Amit Hansraj. Parallel to these personal histories is the broader, often unacknowledged story of women’s labour—domestic, emotional, and creative. “The women who embroidered these phulkaris rarely appear in historical records, yet their interior worlds are embedded in every stitch. The exhibition allows these layers to converse quietly: the specificity of one family’s textile opens into a wider reflection on shared female experience, on repetitive labour as expression, and on making as a form of both endurance and authorship,” shares Kakar.

The phulkaris on display are not just repositories of colour or motif but of music, oral histories and cultural heritage. Materiality is central to the character of these embroideries. According to Kakar, the base fabric was often hand-spun khaddar, valued for its durability and slightly uneven texture, which gave depth and rhythm to the surface. The embroidery itself was executed in pat da dhaga—untwisted silk floss—which allowed light to play across the stitches. “This pairing of humble khaddar with lustrous silk thread is fundamental to phulkari’s visual language. The motifs in the exhibition are both inventive and deeply rooted in everyday life, often drawn from the immediate environment or imagined worlds,” states Kakar. “Phulkari parlance even now contains names such as belan (rolling pin), kakri (cucumber), chandrama (moon), sadak bagh, mirchi bagh, dibbi bagh, satranga (seven colours), pachranga—of which we have two rare examples—and lehriya.”

These designs were never written down; they were passed from generation to generation through memory, observation and practice. Each family developed its own stylistic vocabulary, and with time, each woman evolved a personal repertoire. “Phulkari thus became a deeply expressive medium—an articulation of emotion, aspiration and lived experience. Not surprisingly, phulkari motifs found their way into poetry and oral traditions, carrying wisdom, longing and joy stitched into cloth,” she adds.