Textile art | Social awareness | Embroidery | sustainability
Building a New Normal
Description
Taking the opportunity to design a handcrafted poster for Nila Jaipur's 'Navrang challenge' for COVID awareness and social and environmental responsibility, I fashioned a Textile poster using different traditional craft techniques I had learnt over the years. A textile art installation with strong message.
The purpose was to communicate health and safety measures which prevent the spread of the Coronavirus and a bigger underlying attitude to protect the environment. This challenge was about highlighting the strength Of Our handmade craft traditions to build awareness about important issues.
Craft Stories
quilted patchwork
sashiko repair
REFERENCES
The crafts of Quilted patchwork ( commonly practised in Bengal) and Sashiko embroidery for repair of textile items ( commonly practised in Japan) inspired the foundation of the poster
Sashiko
Sashiko (刺し子?, literally “little stabs”) is a form of decorative reinforcement stitching (or functional embroidery) from Japan. Traditional sashiko was used to reinforce points of wear, or to repair worn places or tears with patches
Visible Mending
Visible mending can be traced back to the Edo era of Japan in the form of sashiko stitching. Now it has taken shape as a fashion movement in order to increase the life cycle of garments.
Kantha
Bengali women used the simple running embroidery stitch to hold recycled cloth layers together using threads taken from old saris and stitching techniques passed down from mother to daughter. Kantha also refers to the running stitch itself, which gives the cloth the wrinkly appearance, characteristic of kantha.
Kitchen Waste Dyeing
A range of Yellows and browns were achieved using kitchen ingredients like onion peel, coffee grinds and turmeric, whereas the blue fabrics are indigo dyeing samples from a classroom project.
Composing
The Poster
What do the figures denote?
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The importance of washing hands wearing masks
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Making some conscious , green choices that help reduce the carbon footprint like growing a vegetables, segregating waste, stitching cloth masks in place of disposables
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supporting vulnerable individuals, such as those living on the street, or donating to organisations that facilitate the same. the figures serve as guidelines.
Patchwork Technique as a dual purpose
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Asking people to stay put in their homes. each house is a latch here. We can help save lives by simply staying at home.
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It also symbolises humans coming together with a renewed attitude. a tangible reminder of our collective experience so that we resolve to be kinder to our fellow humans and our dear planet even when things get back to our so called NORMAL.
The textile poster will be displayed in an exhibition at the NilaJaipur campus as well as on their online exhibitions