At Home in Sittilingi is an exhibition of embroidered textile artwork created by 10 ladies artisans from the Lambadi group. The works are stitched on natural cotton and draw from reminiscence and instant environment — timber that encompass them, tales heard from elders, birds marking seasonal change, millets grown of their fields, and the intricacies of home life.
Held at Sabha, a thoughtfully restored 160-year-old residence in Bengaluru with quiet flooring and sunlit corridors, the open, home-like setting lends the present a way of intimacy. Visitors go away their sneakers at the threshold, getting into barefoot — an unstated gesture of reverence and groundedness. This easy act modifications the manner we have interaction. We step softly. We pause longer. We meet the works not as distant observers, however as listeners in a room filled with tales. The anecdotal texts accompanying every embroidery, written by the ladies themselves, add texture and voice, making the gallery really feel much less like a show and extra like a gathering.
Sabha’s open, home-like setting lends the present a way of intimacy
| Photo Credit:
R Kishore Kumaar
At Home in Sittilingi at Sabha
| Photo Credit:
R Kishore Kumaar
An ‘at home’ residency
The works had been developed by means of a four-month artist residency hosted by the Porgai Artisans Association throughout an “at-home” residency, an artist help mannequin the place the ladies continued to dwell and work inside their very own context (at a studio at the Porgai centre) slightly than being displaced into unfamiliar institutional settings. Curated by designer Anshu Arora, the residency invited the ladies to replicate, keep in mind, and reimagine from inside their very own floor.
Geetha, one in all the 10 artisans, holds up her art work embroidered with inexperienced bee-eaters
| Photo Credit:
Melanie Hinds
Lalitha Regi, co-founder of Porgai, that means pleasure and dignity in the Lambadi dialect, and a senior physician at the Tribal Health Initiative, affords perception into the complexity of participation: “The women had to make many choices in their domestic lives before committing to the residency. It required them to travel 12 kilometres — an unremarkable distance for us, but a world of variables for them. Catching the one bus, ensuring people at home are fed, children taken care of, chores and farm labour attended to… each of their lives holds its own intricate challenges. Once they were made to feel safe, financially and emotionally, and given ownership over their work and creativity, we saw magic.”
That ambiance of belief and co-creation formed the work itself. Over the months, hesitation gave technique to confidence, and the acquainted grammar of Lambadi embroidery remodeled into one thing layered, narrative, and imaginative.
Many of the embroideries carry a playfulness that feels each deliberate and deeply private: a crooked-beaked chook, a smiling cow, a parrot with twinkling eyes, a bee-eater providing a refined wink. These usually are not naive elaborations, however visible signatures of a relationship with the pure world that’s familial, reciprocal, and filled with mirth. The wildlife in these textiles usually are not passive surroundings. They are kin. There is humour, reminiscence, and mischief sewn into the leaves and wings — suggesting a manner of being with nature that’s much less about dominance and extra about camaraderie.
Two of the Lambadi ladies with their art work
| Photo Credit:
Melanie Hinds
Rejecting curation as an act of management
The Association has been energetic in Sittilingi for over 18 years. It started with the revival of Lambadi embroidery and has grown into a cooperative mannequin that centres the artisan not as labourer, however as information holder, designer, and cultural custodian. Today, the collective has 60 ladies. They are paid pretty, retain management of their course of, and make selections as a bunch.
The curation of this exhibition displays that ethos. “Too often, curation becomes an act of control — an exercise in authoriality,” says Arora. “With Porgai, I wanted to hold space without shaping it. The artists already know what they want to say.”
Firewood assortment
| Photo Credit:
Vandita Bajpai
Each artist started with a six-inch sq.. The modest body served as scaffold and chance. From there, they embroidered each independently and collectively, shaping works that had been without delay singular and collective, a complete of 26 items — the smallest being 21” x 11.5” and the largest being 50” x 36.5”. In some instances, they stitched their imaginations facet by facet: 10 interpretations of the sky, every in a special hue, texture, and temper, had been sewn collectively into a bigger tapestry of ambiance.
10 interpretations of the sky
| Photo Credit:
Melanie Hinds
In one other, they explored the floor beneath their toes, rendering stones, shadows, leaves, and soil with a sensitivity to texture and light-weight. Other works emerged by means of collaborative storyboarding: massive items of material had been mapped and divided amongst them to depict scenes of day by day life — a marriage, an agricultural routine, the choreography of water assortment. They used greater than 21 conventional Lambadi stitches (comparable to the maki and bhurai) and a few newly invented ones by the artisans.
Each work is accompanied by a be aware from its maker. Neela speaks of ancestors. Lavanya goals of bees. Parimala embroiders the Porgai centre so her grandchildren would possibly keep in mind it. Selvi’s stream flows with layered material mimicking rock undulations.
Neela, who speaks of ancestors
| Photo Credit:
Himanshu Dimri
Arora additionally situates this ethos inside a broader design discourse. “The definition of luxury is changing. It now is about objects with a story and human connection — handcrafted, speaking of the person behind the item, made slowly and deliberately, with care, ethics, and non-exploitative systems in place. The rich textiles and crafts of our subcontinent are coming alive beautifully in this light.”
Beyond revival
In India, the artwork world continues to replicate caste and sophistication divides. “Art” is gallery-validated, city, and elite. “Craft” is rural, female, lower-caste — and systemically undervalued. Porgai rejects this binary not by means of argument however by means of assertion. These are embroidered works with conceptual readability, formal integrity, and cultural density. They are artwork. They are testimony. They are techniques of realizing.
Artworks with conceptual readability and cultural density
| Photo Credit:
Himanshu Dimri
As Arora notes, “A lot of textile designers and professionals in allied fields are doing revival work. I hope we all keep up with nourishing these communities in ways that make them self-sustaining. As designers and facilitators, the success of our work is when it is temporary — when we can step out eventually, and what we started has a life of its own, runs itself, and blooms and prospers by the people at its core.”
Porgai holds exactly that promise. It is a physique of labor the place course of and product align, the place care is just not an afterthought however the technique. It reveals that aesthetics needn’t be indifferent from ethics. That making may be mutual, and exquisite issues may be made with out violence.
At Home in Sittilingi is on view at Sabha until tomorrow.
The essayist and educator writes on design and tradition.
Published – April 26, 2025 06:12 pm IST
