Bringing the forgotten weavers back into the rich tapestry of Indian textiles

For decades, the gamchha has been a ubiquitous presence on Indian streets.

The traditional scarf, made out of a red-and-white chequered piece of fabric, is used as a towel, pillow, turban, eye mask and even a shoulder drape, mostly by the working classes in West Bengal state and other regions of the country.

But an exhibition in India’s capital Delhi, that concluded two weeks ago, has highlighted the history of the ordinary fabric in a unique way.

Titled Gamchha: From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary, it displayed more than 250 pieces of the short drape from 14 Indian states to show the variations of the scarf-towel across regions.

From white gamchhas from Kerala with pencil-thin coloured borders, Ikat-woven ones from Odisha to Assam’s cotton “gamusa” with red swans and large floral patterns, the interpretations varied from mill-made to hand-woven.

“The show is about speaking up for a social equality symbol that the garment can evoke, even after decades of being left out from the discourse,” said textiles expert Jaya Jaitly, the founder of the Dastkari Haat Samiti, a crafts organisation which presented this show.

The exhibition is part of a series of shows and endeavours, held in the past few months, that seek to redefine our understanding of Indian textiles by taking it in new directions.

From rich woven silks, patterned brocades and intricate chintz to a range of less talked-about textiles, India’s contribution to the global textile industry is unique.

But despite the recognition, including at some of the world’s largest museums, its documentation has been exclusionary and has not kept up with the contemporary practices within the industry.

Until now.

Held by art and craft foundations and curated by researchers in collaboration with private collectors and museums, a number of new exhibitions are sparking something of a renaissance within the industry.

It’s a departure from the more popular, glamourised take on fashion – there are no crowd-pulling Bollywood stars opening the show, or sponsored after-parties. And the venues are often away from big cities.

Instead, the focus is on moving away from urban designers – most of whom are trained in elite colleges in India and abroad – and bring local artisans directly into the fold.

These exhibitions are leading towards “technology-prompted egalitarianism” in the textiles ecosystem, says Ritu Sethi, founder of India’s Crafts Revival Trust. “Because of Instagram and other digital platforms, the anonymity around craftspeople is also shedding off,” she says.

What was once a small community of curators and patrons, has now grown to include experts from various fields, including art and architecture.

Together, they want to take the history of textiles beyond its extolled richness – associated with the grandeur of palaces, and fineries of ceremonial rituals and weddings – to include diverse cloth-making traditions and the people behind it.

The sculpting of a more inclusive contemporary identity is, according to acclaimed designer David Abraham, a homecoming and “a reclamation of pride and value”.

“For Indians, the relationship with textiles is deep-rooted. We express ourselves culturally through colours, weaves and fabric and each of these has a meaning assigned to it. These shows are reaffirming a value in our system,” he says.

Consider these instances. Textiles of Bengal: A Shared Legacy, on display in Kolkata until the end of March, highlights the historic uniqueness of the textile traditions of undivided Bengal.

On display are some never-seen-before fabrics and garments from the 17th Century to now. There are cotton sarees and dhotis (drapes worn by men) that showcase the region’s famed hand weaving traditions such as Jamdani, which continues to be a sought-after fabric even today. Then, there are rare Indo-Portuguese embroideries and some Haji Rumals – embroidered religious cloth once exported to Indonesia and parts of the Arab world as a headdress for men.

The programme includes talks and demonstrations of craft techniques as well as cultural performances – noted dancer Purnima Ghosh performed at one of the sessions dressed in a hand-painted Batik sari. Batik involves drawing designs on fabric with hot liquid wax and a metal object. Artists then use fine brushes to paint dyes within the wax outlines.

“The goal is to bring back attention to Bengal’s shared legacy with Bangladesh, be it textiles, techniques, skills and trades, as well as narrative histories, culture and food, the shifting geographies notwithstanding, “says Darshan Mekani Shah, founder of Weavers Studio Resource Centre, which is holding the exhibition.

Elsewhere, curators are trying to introduce a more nuanced understanding of the history of textiles in India, including the ways in which it has been influenced by larger social realities of caste and class struggles.

Take Pampa: Textiles of Karnataka presented by the Abheraj Baldota Foundation that concluded earlier this month in Hampi, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Among the hundreds of textiles on display there was the embroidery work of the Lambanis, a local nomadic tribe; the Kaudi quilts created by the Siddhi community of the state, which traces its origins to Africa; as well as sacred textiles made for Buddhist monasteries.

Through these depictions, the show tries to tell the histories of the nomadic, tribal and agrarian communities for whom resilient survival was the leitmotif and cloth a way of narrating their marginalised experiences.

And it’s not just all about history – some exhibitions highlight the future of the industry too, as designers find new and innovative ways of imagining traditional textiles in a contemporary idiom.

For instance, the recently concluded Surface: An Exhibition of Indian Embroideries and Surface Embellishment as Art, goes beyond apparel and home decor and spotlights the ways textiles are also being used in paintings, drawings, art installations and sculptures.

The show, organised by Sutrakala Foundation and held around a stepwell in the old city of Jodhpur, featured a set of textile art pieces made by renowned contemporary painter Manisha Parekh.

These shows also play an important role in updating the history of textiles by rigorously documenting it.

“Even some of the country’s biggest fashion institutes do not have an archive of our textiles,” says Lekha Poddar, co-founder of Devi Art Foundation, which has supported nine exhibitions on textiles in the past decade.

The Devi Art Foundation’s recent project, titled, Pehchaan: Enduring Themes in Indian Textiles, has tried to bridge that gap.

Presented in collaboration with Delhi’s National Museum, the show featured a survey of visual and material ideas that have recurred in Indian textiles for more than 500 years, with the oldest exhibit ranging from the 14th and 15th Centuries.

“How will young designers find inspiration for their work if they are not aware of their own histories and don’t have visual references for it?” Ms Poddar asks.

The success of these shows has made organisers hopeful about its future.

The next few years will be all about furthering this creative ecology, says Mayank Mansingh Kaul, who has served as curatorial adviser to 20 such exhibitions in the last 10 years.

“Slowly, we will build new audiences, collaborate more and nudge the next generation of makers and practitioners to aspire for quality.”

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