Throughout this week, the Victoria Memorial will display scrolls which depict the freedom movement and have been created on fabric by students of top schools in Kolkata as their response to similar artwork by stalwarts.
The artworks that the students have responded to belong to the Delhi Art Gallery’s (DAG) collection, and the pop-up installation — titled ‘Fabric of Freedom’, and to be on display at the Great Indian Reformers Gallery in Victoria Memorial Hall from August 13 to 18 — will include those artworks too. The students belong to Ek Tara Learning Centre, Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, Modern High School for Girls, and South City International School.
“The installation has been created by students in collaboration with the DAG team, drawing inspiration from the artworks from the DAG collection. It highlights the different threads of rebellion which helped spin the fabric of freedom, adding to the histories that are showcased in the Great Reformers Gallery. The charkha was chosen as the overarching framework holding together these stories, considering its significance as a motif during the struggle for independence,” the DAG said in a release.
“Through scrolls of cloth crafted using different methods of dyeing, printing and appliqué, the installation explores the significance of textiles in colonial trade, and in the country’s march to freedom. The scrolls form the ‘strands’ of the charkha and present four stories that weave together different events, phases, and ideals of the freedom movement with the students’ imagination,” it further said.
Sumona Chakravarty of the DAG told The Hindu that the project was driven by the questions students raised when they studied artworks that represented weavers, textile workers, Santhal leaders, and ordinary people of the freedom movement. “Art pushes us to ask questions that we probably don’t ask in our daily lives and this sense of ‘what if’ is what is reflected in the students’ take on the stories of freedom,” she said.
“Museum objects and collections are not frozen in time; we need to constantly engage with our histories. Students responded to artworks to imagine stories of people who resisted colonial oppression, focusing on the links between textile and our freedom struggle. They worked with the DAG for a week to create the scrolls, which are displayed alongside historical artworks in the framework of a charkha,” Ms. Chakravarty said.
