CHENNAI: If you walk down Valmiki Nagar’s Second Seaward Road on a weekday evening, you’ll meet Anjalé, a grandmother who for years has sat by a quiet corner of that lane weaving delicate festoons out of jasmines and roses. She loves how these blooms turn sacred ornaments for countless goddesses and fragrant embellishments for the women she sells them to.
But Anjalé paati’s most beloved admirer is six-year-old Isha George, to who she has been gifting her creations since she first met her more than four years ago. The toddler, who was on a stroll with her mother, had drifted off to the ‘poo paati’ with her tiny palm outstretched, and every day since then, Anjalé has kept aside a set of flowers for Isha.
The heartening story of their friendship has been immortalised in an exquisite quilt sewed together by Isha’s mum Chita Mandanna, and is among the 33 quilts on display at ‘The Many Faces’, an art quilt exhibition on at Sri Sankara Hall, Alwarpet. The travel exhibit, curated by Chennai’s Quilt India Foundation features international award-winning quilts by 20 artists who are mainly from Chennai, with a few from other parts of the country. Most of them are self-taught, and a few are first-timers.
In parts of Africa, quilting as an art form has its roots in ancient storytelling and in the US, it has been a powerful medium of resistance by a sisterhood of black women quilters as part of the Black Lives Matter Movement, particularly after the killing of George Floyd.
America’s history of quilting dates back to the Civil War and the Underground Railroad (a network of secret safe houses and routes used by enslaved African-Americans) when slaves used quilts to communicate with each other, says city doctor Aiswarya Rao, who has threaded together a hauntingly evocative interpretation of the 19-year-old dalit woman from Hathras who was gang-raped and done to death in 2019.
“In India though, the tradition of quilts has rarely exceeded its utility value during the winters. But this movement features them as objects of beauty or precious memorabilia; portraits of loved ones or gifts children travelling abroad can remember their families by,” says Aiswarya.
Gurugram-based Sindhu Aragam’s quilt on display is ‘Remember Well’, a portrait of her husband with his four friends of 35 years. “It is the perfect way to represent their group; smiling from ear-to-ear and happiest in each other’s company,” says Sindhu who has won at Birmingham’s Festival of quilts, one of the world’s most celebrated quilt shows.
Varsha Sundararajan, one of the founders of Quilt India Foundation which has been conducting the India International Quilt Festival since 2019, says they want to promote quilting as a textile art form in the country. “Here, quilting is considered more a craft than a form of art. Our artists have won laurels across the globe. We wanted to showcase portraits, because they are easier to resonate with, than abstract forms of art,” says Varsha.
The exhibition will be on display till April 11 and is a precursor to the India International Quilt Festival that will take place early next year.
