MOTIF MUTINY: Seeing and Being Seen

Paper Abstract: Craft is considered a subversive tool in the West to push back against issues that threaten craft artists agency. In India though, not necessarily. Though there has been a drive to promote indigenous craft in different timelines, including promoting the craftsperson as an artisan, but the spotlight has always been on the craft being rural and how the promotion of it can bring economic gain to the artisan. Does this elevate their position from artisan to artist?
I question if current co-design projects position the craftswomen with agency. Traditional pictorial crafts in India like Gond, Mata ne Pachedi, and Warli et al (all male-led crafts), have seen an elevation of the craftsmen to artists and are seeing their moment in the sun. But fibre-based crafts, especially embroidery, which is female-led in India, falls under the category of artisanal work. I argue that craftswomen are artists and cultural owners and don’t need to be typical artists dictated by theories and principles used in contemporary art practices. With their motifs for support, a group of determined craftswomen doing gendered emboridery can decolonise the way one looks at Indian craft. I question, what are the elements of a collaboration that repositions craftswomen as artists? With a socially-engaged practice through the lens of collaborative autoethnography framework, I proposed an intervention with Rabari embroidery artists - telling decolonial feminist stories through our individual material practice. The collaboration recognises the object-based culture of the Rabaris and portrays them as creative cultural owners and as female artists.