Green Art Gallery in Dubai invites everyone to visit the Reverberations: Textile as Echo exhibition displaying works by Moroccan artist M’barek Bouhchichi, Indian artist Sayan Chanda, New Delhi-born artist Himali Singh Soin, and Canadian artist Swapnaa Tamhane. Curated by Murtaza Vali, the show presents contemporary approaches to textile and fibre art and will be open to the public until the 27th of July, 2024.
The exhibited artworks draw from the textile traditions in South and West Asia and North Africa. Most of these pieces are created together with master craftsmen employing various traditional dyeing and weaving techniques and materials. They challenge colonial and modernist narratives that have historically marginalised indigenous textile traditions, instead reclaiming them as remarkable forms of contemporary expression.
The Terra series by M’barek Bouhchichi delves into the forgotten connections between southeastern Morocco and northeastern Mali. Crafted in collaboration with a group of women preserving ancestral weaving techniques, the minimal artworks from the series are made of wool fabric dyed with henna paste. Inspired by patterns and motifs shared between the two regions, Bouhchichi’s works evoke architecture and landscape. They pay tribute to the cultural and knowledge exchanges across an area between the Atlas Mountains and the western Sahara.
To produce his Jomi series, Sayan Chanda takes cues from Nakshi Kanthar Math (The Field of the Embroidered Quilt) (1928), a poem by Jasimuddin that was read to him as a child. It tells the story of Rupai and Saju, a couple forced to separate. Grieving Saju embroiders episodes from her life onto a quilt Rupai later finds on her grave when he eventually returns. The Jomi series recognises textiles as carriers of personal and collective memory, history, and knowledge by deconstructing and reassembling vintage Kantha quilts into new abstract compositions.
Himali Singh Soin showcases her work titled Mountain, pixelated in the water (2021). Part of her We are opposite like that (a series of interdisciplinary art pieces), this double tapestry may be one of the longest single design Ikat pieces to have ever been crafted in India. With Ikat’s distinctive ornament that looks like the glitchy digital audio print, the artwork portrays the sound waves of smashing ice crystals and soundscapes speculating on the presence of Others at the earth’s Poles. The tapestry was woven by master Gajam Govardhan and his family using indigo, organic cotton, and ahimsa (non-violent) silk. It took the weavers eight months. The employed materials refer to the colonial histories of indigo cultivation and Gandhi’s promotion of handspun cotton to achieve self-sufficiency and independence.
The Bird’s-Eye series by Swapnaa Tamhane features hand-cut mirrors embroidered by members of the Qasab Kutch Craftswomen Producer Co. Ltd onto fabric coloured using natural dyes. The works recreate a plan of a Kutchi village where Tamhane found a vintage design magazine from post-independence India. Mirroring and inverting the found pattern, the artist turns an exercise in cartographic control into a remarkable ornament.
Through their art including collaborative endeavours, the exhibiting creatives emphasise the power of textiles to hold and express personal and collective memory, history, and identity. They ensure that the history of textile art continues to resonate in contemporary times.
To get more information about Reverberations: Textile as Echo, please visit the official web page of the show.
In addition, you might be interested in seeing the Golden Spider Silk exhibition that is currently on view at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA).
