Seven raffia goddesses at Chanakya’s Byculla atelier

A 2.6-metre Brahmi rises in a narrow column at Chanakya International’s Byculla atelier, one of seven Saptamatrikas arranged in red raffia at the centre of *Garden of Gestures*.

The exhibition is part of Chanakya’s 40th-year programme, which also marks a decade of its School of Craft. The Mumbai-based textile and embroidery house has mounted three exhibitions on divine women, working women and the transmission of skill.

Seven figures in a working atelier

At the Byculla show, visitors move through groves named for stages of learning a craft. Upvan contains workshop tools, natural dyes, fabric scraps, textile studies and photographs of hands at work. In Tapovan, the seven goddesses form a red arc taller than a doorway.

Creative director Karishma Swali drew the figures before artisans from the School of Craft built them in sections — faces, hands and torsos — and assembled them at a scale new to the group. The artisans split, soaked and shaped the materials, then knotted, plaited, coiled or wove them by hand.

Abdul Hanif Jamadar, a crochet and macramé specialist from Howrah, worked on the figures after Swali explained the goddesses and their powers. He had previously contributed to the 46-foot toran made for Dior’s 2023 Gateway of India show. Preeti Khimsaria, who left an IT career to study crochet, tatting and macramé at the School, worked on the Matrikas as her first large project.

Three venues, different journeys

At the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, *En Route* follows six travellers and the women who stitched the world’s globes, considering how knowledge moves. *Belong*, at Experimenter in Colaba, returns to the goddesses in plain fibre and considers what people carry with them.

Chanakya was founded in 1986 by Vinod Shah, who brought craftspeople from across India to Mumbai.