Chiaki Maki brings plant-grown colour and handwoven silk to KAASH Bengaluru

Nearly 18 metres of handwoven textile, *Two Plants*, stretches across KAASH Bengaluru in lemon yellow and emerald-tinged blue — colours drawn from night-flowering jasmine and fresh indigo leaves.

The work is part of *The Quiet Hand*, Japanese weaver and artist Chiaki Maki’s first solo exhibition in southern India. Maki grows fibre and dye plants at Ganga Maki, her 2.5-acre studio outside Dehradun, including indigo, banana plants grown for fibre, ramie and night-flowering jasmine.

Her *Koshi* panels move through shades of indigo harvested in a given year, from deep navy to pale asagi blue. In the *Yuragi* series, silk retains the unevenness of individual cocoons rather than being made uniform. Maki draws fibres by hand, then gathers and dries them before weaving.

Other pieces include *80 Cocoons Red*, made from thread drawn from 80 cocoons and dyed with madder and sappanwood, and *Tsunagi*, where the end of one warp is tied by hand to the next. Some works contain 1,000 to 2,000 such connections.