Gathering Threads
India’s handloom heritage carries within it a deep ecology of labour, land, memory, and resistance. In a world shaped by speed, scale, and spectacle, handloom insists on another rhythm—one of tactility, care, and continuity. The journey from loom to market is marked by slippages where craft becomes commodity, and provenance is lost. Hence, National Handloom Day serves as a call to rethread what history has frayed—to hold space for tension, survival, and future possibility.
KCC’s Gathering Threads is a two-day symposium that reflects on this layered ecosystem—not just to celebrate handloom, but to critically engage with its entanglements with state policy, markets, identity, and cultural survival. We bring together designers, artists, scholars, and stakeholders to discuss how India’s textile heritage is preserved, performed, and positioned in a world of accelerated change.
We invite you to join not as spectators but as co-weavers of thought and dialogue—where fabric is not only a product but a palimpsest of endurance, beauty, and becoming. Come, let us honour the Handloom, and along with it, a deeper grammar of being—where every weave speaks of continuity, attention, and care.
Date: 7th- 8th August 2025
Time: 10:45 AM onwards
Venue: KCC, Fourth Floor
DAY 1
Opening Session by Sanjay Garg, which will be a conversation
with Ina Puri, on handloom, memory, and materiality, reflecting
on Sanjay Garg’s journey and the deeper resonances of textile practice.
The Panel, “Ethics: The Moral Aesthetics of the Handmade”
having Kallol Datta, Malika Dudeja Varma in conversation with Ina Puri,
will be a sharp and timely conversation that will unpack the ethics,
affect, aesthetics, and provocations borne out of the handmade.
The first day’s roundtable, “Legacy and Regeneration”,
moderated by Nandita Palchoudhuri, will explore the layered histories
of Indian handlooms—tracing their transformations across colonial, Gandhian,
post-liberal, and contemporary moments. Speakers will reflect on
how tradition can become a site of regeneration rather than repetition,
and how new forms of collaboration might honour past
vocabularies while responding to present-day urgencies.
DAY 2
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Keynote Address by Gaurang Shah, delving into the intricate relationship
between design and heritage, and sharing insights from his journey of
reviving forgotten weaves, and reimagining traditional textiles
for a contemporary world.
The Panel, “Woven Selves: Intersectionality, Identity, and the Act of Making”
having Parama Ghosh, Papri Basak and Anamika Debnath in conversation
with Ina Puri, will be a reflection on the layered ecosystem of handloom
and an exploration of the same as a site where identity, labour and lineage intersect.
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An enlightening session, “The Future of Handloom in the Age of Technology
with Jaya Jaitly, will be followed by a book signing of her recent publication,
The Little Indian Gamchha Book.
With the Roundtable, “Handloom and Praxis”, moderated by Ina Puri,
the conversation will move from discourse to action. How do practitioners
balance innovation with ethics, and scale with care? What models exist —
or must be created—that position weavers not as passive custodians of heritage,
but as active agents of aesthetic and economic choice?
