Embroidery in Asia: Sui Dhaga: Crossing Boundaries Through Needle and Thread

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The archaeological evidence with regard to embroidery can be traced back to many ancient civilizations, ranging from Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Mexico. It bears testimony to the value and importance given to the art of embroidery, both for itself as well as an instrument of inter-and intra-cultural dialogue, even political diplomacy. Embroidered fabric adorned royalty. It was valued at par with music, dance and poetry, and was important enough to be transmitted from one generation of women to next. Asia has been the home of many traditions of exquisite genres of embroideries which have a social context, an artistic form and a symbolic value. IIC-Asia Project has been, in its second phase, exploring the manner and method of transmission of knowledge within each unit and its transmission across borders. The IIC-Asia Project organized a programme in September 2005 on the theme Sui Dhaga: Crossing Boundaries through Needle and Thread, comprising a seminar, an exhibition and a craft demonstration-cum-workshop, in collaboration with the Crafts Council of India. Through these inter-locked events, attention was drawn to the role of women who have demonstrated a high degree of creativity. Through the humble and ordinary needle and thread, they established many bridges of communication between and amongst cultures. This volume comprises some of the essays presented at the seminar by participants ranging from Palestine, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. These make explicit the rich tradition of embroidery in a social, economic and political context. Dr Kapila Vatsyayan, Chairperson of the IIC-Asia Project, conceived and designed the three interrelated events.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kapila Vatsyayan

Kapila Vatsyayan artist and art historian is internationally acknowledged as the pioneer of evolving alternate models of research for establishing inter and intra-relationship of different domains of knowledge and creativity. Her own work moves from a deep understanding of the primary textual sources of the East and West, principally Sanskrit and English, and a direct experience of the arts as performer. It focuses attention on the inter relationship of the concept and creative interpretation in architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and dance. The kinetic image enables her to delve deeper into the textual and oral sources and the fundamental metaphysics which govern form and structure of the arts. She has convincingly drawn attention to the sacred geometry which pervades all the Indian arts. As visualiser of the conceptual plan of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, she leaps across many disciplines, questions the conventional boundaries and finally establishes several bridges of communication between traditional thought and modern science. This has resulted in many multi-disciplinary studies of space and time, nature and culture, man and society, chaos and order. Her holistic integral vision is explicit in the volumes she has edited on these subjects. Her first work, Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts, is a milestone by experts the world over. This work was followed by many others including the definitive study of Dance in Indian Painting, The Theoretical Basis of Asian Aesthetic Traditions; Traditional Indian Theatre: Multiple Streams; six volumes on Gita Govinda; Bharata and the Natyasastra; and the Square and the Circle of the Indian Arts. She has edited the volumes on Concepts of Space: Ancient and Modern and Concepts of Time: Ancient and Modern published by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi.