Reverberations: Textile as Echo brings together work by four contemporary artists—M’barek Bouhchichi, Sayan Chanda, Himali Singh Soin, and Swapnaa Tamhane—that references the rich and diverse history and practice of textile arts across South and West Asia and North Africa. Often made in collaboration with master artisans, the included artworks use a variety of traditional dyeing and weaving techniques and materials: wool cloth made in southeastern Morocco and then stained with henna; a handwoven tapestry and a patchwork abstraction that incorporate deconstructed vintage quilts and scarves from Bengal; Ikat fabric dyed and woven in Andhra Pradesh; and industrially made cotton embellished by hand with wood block printing and mirror embroidery in the desert region of Kutch, Gujarat. Countering colonial and modernist discourses that devalued such Indigenous textile traditions as mere craft, these works reclaim their vitality as a mode of contemporary expression. Complicating modernist notions of autonomy and authorship through collaboration, they blur commonly held distinctions between object and process, form and ornament, past and future, and the handmade and the digital. And much like the traditional techniques and processes they invoke, these artworks remind us that textile is always a multisensory medium, resonating across visual, sonic, and bodily registers.

Reverberations: Textile as Echo is the second of three exhibitions showcasing contemporary approaches to textile and fiber art curated by Murtaza Vali for Green Art Gallery.