Threading dreams

ALL along, Sujuni Kantha as the art of Kantha running stitch on layered work is known in Bihar was used to make gifts for weddings and bi...

ALL along, Sujuni Kantha as the art of Kantha running stitch on layered work is known in Bihar was used to make gifts for weddings and births.For some women, though, the craft has been an ally of sorts in the struggle for change. In the works of the women of Bhusura region in northern Bihar, being exhibited at the National Centre for Performing Arts, planes, trains, automobiles, computers, jeans-clad, straight backed women, deaths by bride burning and AIDS jostle for canvas space along with the traditional birds and leaves. The canvases, on display at the Jehangir Nicholson Art Gallery, NCPA, thread together statements against discrimination, oppression, a world where women are commodities for sale.

Marriage without dowry, declares a work bravely and a shade wistfully. Worked into the coloured embroidery are questions and statements that are as much a reflection of the society the artists live and work in as they are a comment on rural womanhood: Sex trafficking, environmental degradation, AIDS, thePokharan nuclear tests and education for all.

The medium of Sujuni may stay the same, but its message has been given a twist by the women in search of self expression. This pretty, intricate craft of embroidering quilts has been a catalyst of change for its craftspeople, pushing them miles beyond the boundaries of their homes. Like most traditional crafts, Sujuni Kantha, which dates back sometime in the 18th century, was a fast disappearing craft. Until a Patna-based women8217;s organisation, Adithi, headed by Viji Srinivasan, which functions through the Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti MVSS, began efforts for its revival. The craft, which was being traditionally practised in homes there, was an ideal tool to help the women carve out their independence. Reviving and recreating the craft in the bargain.

quot;In Bhusura, women could not go three kms beyond their home till recently!quot; chuckled the feisty Nirmala Bhushan, who joined the MVSS with just three others in 1989. quot;Then people used to taunt us,quot; she recalls.Today, the scheme has proved to be a great moneyspinner, and has around 350 members.Archana has been threading her thoughts ever since she was six years old. She speaks of her village Ramnagar, in Muzzafarpur district, as one steeped in purdah, where the lives of women is regulated by several do-s and don8217;ts.

But Archana, 20, shrunk the gap between Ramnagar and her world outside by even travelling to New York recently to participate in an exhibition of Sujuni there organised by the Asia Society. quot;I thought, if men could go, why not women,quot; she simply said.

These craftspersons were in Mumbai last week to attend a four-day workshop The Running Stitch A Collaborative Effort8217;, organised by the Morarka Centre for Research and Revival of Craft of the National Centre for Performing Arts NCPA. For four days, the sunken garden of Chauraha at the Centre was a green canvas for an exchange of ideas and creative space between the women of Bhusura and artists and fashion designers from Mumbai.

Nehal Shah,co-ordinator, said the workshop aimed at shaking up the hierarchy between craftspeople, artists and fashion designers. quot;They pursue different agendas, different dogmas, have different priorities. Here, the effort is to pair up two artists, one rural, one urban, and let them work in their own respective space. Then, the artists swap their spaces and work on what the other has created.quot;

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Shah felt that while the revival of craft8217; was a fad many latched on to, few sat down to think about whom the craft was being revived for. quot;For several craftspeople, art has to be saved to help survival, not necessarily for its own sake. But some have tried to work out a strategy where they create partly for the market and partly for creative purposes,quot; she pointed out.

The workshop brought artists like Madhav Imartey, Shauntala Kulkarni, Chintan Upadhaya, Jyotee and Bharati Kapadia and fashion designers like Sarah Eapen, Nahid Merchant, Gayatri Ruia, Tarpana Shah, Savio Jon and Ranji Kelkar up close with the craftspeople.The workshop culminated in a talk given by Skye Morisson, a textile professor in Canada and a visiting faculty at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, on Friday. The results of this meeting of high art and style and rural skill are on display till February 26.