Curative handcrafted textiles: Healing generations

Abstract

While natural disasters in the past, along with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, have disrupted livelihoods, they have also activated the structuring of handicraft as an age-old remedial practice with curative properties. Further, the need for communicating textile processes, in support of slow fashion, has allowed educational institutions to contextualize this teaching with the help of pedagogical models that define the role of both craft education and craft-based research. As an educator at Pearl Academy, India, what I can observe in the modern world today is that there is always a cross-cultural contact between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ and that, the much-discussed ‘global village’ is no longer a fantasy but a fact, despite numerous paradoxes. This article aims at giving an insight into my perspectives and experiences that shed light on the plight of handicraft in the most hand-skilled country in the world. It also lends a bird’s-eye point of view on the need to break barriers between modern and traditional, between urban and rural, etc., and look at the many avatars of handicraft and techniques being repurposed for modern applications such as luxury fashion, interior design and jewellery. This can result in the creation of works that are not only aesthetically pleasing but are also functional, sustainable and culturally sensitive and can help designers and artists navigate complex ethical issues that resonate with diverse communities. The article takes into consideration handcrafted textile samples developed by three postgraduate fashion design students at Pearl Academy, India, who have developed textile samples as part of their project called ‘Hybrid Textiles’. The samples create an epilogue to the context of this study through an ‘end of life’ narrative and craft practices in India.