Skip to content Skip to footer

Urban Fabric

“Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, textiles also includes colour, and, as the dominating element, texture, which is the result of the construction of weaves. Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.”

– Anni Albers

With the turn of the century, this demarcation between the ‘usefulness’ of craft and the ‘aesthetic supremacy’ of fine art started getting blurred as intersections happened through collaborations and borrowed inspirations. ‘URBAN FABRIC’, curated by Suresh Jayaram and Sagar Shastri, investigates this convergence while addressing the concerns in the traditional as well as in the contemporary practices of textile art and industry. Currently, on display at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore, the show has brought together artists, craft practitioners and organisations to map the textile production in the city. The participating artists including Aishwaryan K, Anita N, Girija P Siddi, Archana Hande, Jeevan Xavier, Lavanya Mani, Umesh Kumar P N, Shantamani Mudaiah, Smitha Cariappa, Rakhee Shenoy and S G Vasudev worked in a myriad of techniques and mediums, ranging from weaving, knitting, quilting, tailoring and stitching.
Craft as a community-based practice has reserved the front row of the show where artisans from the Siddhi community, migrant tailors from Maharashtra and the Devangas of Bangalore have collaborated with the artists and brought their practice to the urban viewers.
This exhibition is a culmination of a project that was part of Project 560, a grant awarded to 1Shanthi Road Studio/Gallery by the India Foundation of the Arts,Bangalore, in collaboration with Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, and Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.
Urban Fabric continues until March 25.

Explore more artworks that we have curated for you: