RAISA KABIR from Wash Studio on Vimeo.
Detail of 'বুনন-শিল্প প্রতিরোধ ভাষা'
'The art and language of weaving resistance' 2021
A piece about the language of weaving, between border lands and the resistance of textiles in sites of conflict. Responding to the archives of John Forbes Watsons books: 'The Textile Manufactures of India' 1866, and creating a pattern of weaves that speaks back to the colonial archive. To all the textiles that were cut into fragments and sent around Britain to be subsumed into Britsh textile manufacturing and design education, this piece stays uncut. The colours evoke the boundaries and borders of saris and every combination was an imagining of the textiles I remember encountering in South Asian dress and textiles. And invoking the student textile weavings found in the archive at the Lanchashire textile industry archives.
The textile prints of the archives presented name Kashmir, Punjab, Sylhet, Herat, Lahore, Calcutta, Dhaka. Places that map the border lands that define partition in 1947, where colonial borders were created and exist to separate people in the name of nationhood. But many textile techniques of these places ares shared and are used across those sites of borderlands. The language of textiles crossing borders, shared culture and history.
The places affected by partition created large diasporas, where people had to leave and were invited to work in the British textile industry in East Lancashire. Where many communities have built their lives and families here since. Partition exists here today. We are part of these borders that do not only exist geographically but internally are reinforced and reinscribed.