As a textile artist, I use materials, textures, imagery, and senses to evoke place and time. This year in particular, I tried to bring a feeling of comfort back to the isolated existence I experienced in America in the midst of a global pandemic. I wanted to make my home in India almost palpable- within my reach.

Working on the jacquard loom and embedding a textile with spices common in my family’s cooking allowed me to capture the comfort of scent; just the smell of a spice can trigger fond, powerful memories. Now these textiles can envelop a space with the scent of spices, but have also become meaningful objects that can be folded up and taken with me wherever I go, as a reminder of home and the warmth it brings.


Aromatics

Recipes are held in high regard in India. They are considered precious heirlooms and every family has a collection of recipes passed down from ancestors. Since text and language is such an important part of eating, I wove in the recipe of "Dal" (Lentils) in my ancestral language of Gujarati. I also introduced woollen floats in my weave structure over the text to represent spills and stains, that are such a characteristic of old recipe books. The material was then agitated by hand in order to felt the wool and fuse the yarn together to make one surface. I then cut the wool in some areas to expose the text underneath and to break up the repeat. 

 દાળ

When I was young, around 5 or 6 years old, I started experiencing frequent asthma attacks. Every time I felt sick, tired or found it hard to breathe, my mother would walk into my room with a bowl of dal and rice. She would sit next to me, feed me and talk to me and for a few moments, the sound of incessant wheezing would fade away and I felt at peace. I still chase that feeling now, in times of uncertainty. 

​Last summer, amid a global pandemic, I found myself chasing the same feeling of comfort. Unearthing old recipes, I began to cook dal and rice in my kitchen, 8000 miles away from home. The sound of a bubbling concoction on the stove and the aroma of the spices, instantly transported me to my little kitchen in India.  

​Food is a vehicle for nostalgia. Just the smell of a spice or the taste of a familiar ingredient can trigger a fond memory. Comfort foods remind us of our social ties, as we tend to associate it with social gatherings or family members and thus, they give us security when we feel isolated.

Through my jacquard work, I wanted to invite people into my home and experience the colours, smells and comfort of my bustling kitchen. I wanted my work fill up a space with some warmth, providing a few moments of solace amidst chaos and isolation.

Woven Pantry 

Cooking at home is so much more than just the dish on the plate, it is about the context of when or how the food is being prepared. There is enriched symbolism acquired when one eats food from home, because it reminds one of deep unconscious memories from one's childhood- eating as a family and being nourished. When I think of eating at home, my nostalgia doesn't start and stop at the kitchen or the table, it involves going to the bustling marketplace in Bangalore to procure ingredients. This diptych was made by layering concrete- A material heavily prevalent in the bazaar I frequent back home- on to muslin fabric.

Concrete, often seen as an opaque, hard, cold material, when combined with fabric has an incredible luminosity when shown against light. I wanted to play with the opacity and translucency of the material by painting with dye on the back of the fabric. I projected photographs of the marketplace on to the back of the fabric and painted with dye, alternating between thin and thick lines. I then lit the pieces from behind with a warm, glowing light, which made the material come alive. Some lines were interrupted and hidden by layers of thick concrete and some lines were clearly visible where the concrete was thin.

Bazaar

This piece, inspired by the coconut trees I can see from my kitchen at home, was woven on a handloom. Sisal rope, manila rope and jute represent the natural, organic trees, while the grid-like, structured cotton is reminiscent of my window. 

Woven on a spaced warp and with 16 long lengths of rope at a time for the weft, the rope weaves in and out and interlocks at intervals to give it more structure, as well as to depict the interlocking of the palm fronds. The bottom of the textile is woven with thicker, denser, darker manila rope, like the thick tree trunks, and as you go up, the materials get thinner and lighter, ending with thin jute at the top. 

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Anushka Divecha