Embroidery is Labor but it is also Art

A short documentary on the tribal art of Kutch, Gujarat surprisingly boarded on such perilous journeys to remote communities of the ‘Rabaris’ that have created amazing work, now seemingly part of the adrift realm, to learn what remains of ancient cultural art, the desires that highlight it, and how it has been affected over time by diplomatic, societal and spiritual invasions from the West.

To be human is to create and some of the most compelling art in the world has been made by some of its poorest people, and this fascinates me. Thus pops up the question, ‘To what extent can traditional art survive in the modern world and contemporary times?’

Rabaris, full of pride, with a feeling of independence and deeply attached to their tradition, travelled across the subcontinent and spread into different regions. Adjusting to new circumstances, subgroups of Rabaris instantaneously preserved their identity and conserved their culture. The balance maintained between tradition and change is tangibly expressed in Rabari adornment through their style of embroidery. Their style is distinctive and unique.

This embroidery is like a language with which women express themselves. It is a medium of conveying their thoughts, emotions and beliefs to the world. All motifs and their specific composition have a name and meaning. Many of these symbols represent elements central to Rabari’s everyday life and throw light upon how the community sees the world and their views about the different parts of the world. The type of embroidery on the garment clearly classifies and institutes the person’s identity; the different communities of Rabari women can be identified from the type and placement of embroidery on their odhanis and blouses and men’s fate by his turban.  

Even today, in the Rabari community, the social gathering of producing embroidery is learnt and traded during weddings in form of dowries. Today a Rabari daughter is likely to bring thirty to fifty cross-stitched blouses to her in-laws. Biological families disapprove girls for not completing their embroidery in time. Thus, unmarried girls sense the pressure and dearth of time and are put into conflicting situations.

At the same time due to the move in the market economy, families could no longer survive on one source of income, so women started to work. For them, there is little differentiation between embroidering for pay and doing plantation work. It’s basically a means of survival.

On similar grounds, the silk route was a milestone in the history of textiles and carpets as well. Carpets are regarded as holy pieces of textiles in several cultures across the world such as Islam. They are used as prevailing means of narration just as the Rabaris did through their embroidery.

Carpets acquire their names from the regions in which they are manufactured as well as their methods of fabrication, the distinctive arrangements of their adornment, the outline of the design and the purpose of usage. These carpets had demonstrative bodily forms portrayed in a very symmetrical way. Portraits were one significant channel of narrating a story about the carpets as seen in ‘The Somerset House,’ Van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Painting,’ Lorenzo Lotto’s ‘Husband and Wife’ and Domenico di Bartolo’s ‘The Marriage of the Foundlings.’ The carpets perceived in the paintings had a lot to communicate differing upon simple essentials like position, shade and usage. Also what caught my attention was how the purpose of the carpets from the East differs from the carpets from the West. 


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