DETAILS
54 Pages
30 Images
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Shisha, Kantha, and Kachchh: South Asian Domestic Embroidery in the TATTER Collection is the first long-term exhibition in the Blue Library. Pulling together and highlighting pieces from our collection that present domestic textiles as works of art and their makers as artists, this exhibition will include shisha mirrorwork panels, kantha-stitched coverings for the home, and Kachchh (Kutch) dowry bags. These objects incorporate traditional motifs reflective of rural and nomadic life in the delta and desert regions of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. While they display the creativity and individual hands of the women and girls who made them, they also show signs of life in their wear and stains.
This exhibition emerged as a complement to our educational programming, lending materiality and context to the techniques our beloved veteran teachers, Ekta Kaul and Shahnaz Khan, have been offering our TATTER community for years. We hope that this exhibition will be the first of many as we approach ten years as an institution and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Our in-person exhibition will be available for early viewing to students attending Ekta’s Illustrative and Geometric Kantha classes on August 13th and 14th. The exhibition will be open to the public from September 8th to December 20th, with an expanded digital exhibition freely available on our Substack.