The National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum
in New Delhi is getting ready for a seminal exhibition. Starting January 20,
the space will serve as a backdrop to some of the most exquisite, handcrafted
textiles produced by Martand Singh, or Mapu, as he was fondly known.The show, A Search in Five Directions,
draws such textiles from seven editions [1981 to 1991] of the Viswakarma series
initiated by Mapu, which reflected both classical tradition and contemporary
expression.
One of the significant pieces that will
be on display is a rare textile from Kodali Karuppur, located in the Thanjavur
district. “It involved the complex combination ofjamdani and kalamkari. The tradition had been
dead for decades. But Mapu had to look at 100-year-old sources to figure out
which was the village where this textile was produced and managed to create one
piece with the craftsmen,” says Rahul Jain, textile designer, art historian and
author, who has curated the exhibition at the National Handicrafts and Handloom
Museum along with textile scholar Rta Kapur Chishti and Rakesh Thakore,
director, Abraham & Thakore. Yet another beautiful piece on display is a
sari from Odisha, which features calligraphy from the beginning to the end.
The exhibition is being presented in collaboration with the Devi Art
Foundation. “This was, in some ways, the largest pan-India projects on
textiles. All of it was experimental at that time and also unprecedented. And
it happened because of the support by the Indian government,” says Jain. The
works have been divided into two galleries: the first showcasing textiles with
a strong classical sensibility and show a continuing of age-old vocabularies.
The second gallery is designed to reflect on
the questions that were at the heart of Mapu’s practice: Is that high quality
of work still possible? How do you change the design template to make it
relevant to the time? How does one re-adapt tradition to newer vocabularies and
create something that people would like to own? “For instance, he met families
in Nathdwara that made pichvais. Now, that is a religious
textile, and not everyone might want to own something with a strong religious
element,” says Jain. “So, he decided to underplay those elements, or bring out
subsidiary elements, without changing the essence of techniques.”
However, what makes this exhibition really unique is the fact that one will get
to see Mapu’s work with largescale architectural textiles. “In the past 15
years, the Indian fashion industry has really taken off, and all handcrafted
fabric is now being produced for the human body. In the 1980s, Mapu, on the
other hand, was interested in textiles for the public spaces such as theatre
curtains,” says Jain.
Before starting the Viswakarma series, when
he redesigned the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad, he created one gallery on the
royal tentage. “Till 100 years ago, a lot of high quality fabric was in the
form of architectural textiles. Today, these have completely disappeared. So,
50 percent of this exhibition is dedicated to bringing that part of his body of
work into prominence,” he says. It also highlights how largescale craft
production takes one in a different technical zone altogether. For instance,
it’s amazing to see a 30 foot by 15 foot cloth, in which 1,500 printing blocks
have been used to create a single, non-repeating motif.
Source: SME Times, India Friday, 19 January 2018