The age of exploration was one in which a confident and wealthy Europe
was ready to look at the world in different ways. By this time, the
emerging European imagination could see the world as an imagined or
designative concept. Textiles brought the colours of the other lands,
and its mass printing and production brought a sense of fantasy and
playfulness into European homes. Continuing Traditions follows the
reflections on inter-relationships between textiles, trade and
non-performing visual arts in India. The volume has been brought out in
conjunction with a travelling exhibition in India called Safar-nama:
Journeys through a Kalamkari Hanging, an exhibition of digital prints of
an ancient painted fabric piece in the kalamkari tradition, which
prevailed in the Coromandel Coast, and is now housed at the Museum of
Printed Textiles of Mulhouse in France, along with 'Continuing
Traditions', a show of contemporary artists and designers whose works
can relate to it. After a long modernist interregnum in which the sole
objective was to create a thing-in-itself, these works emerge as a
postmodernist re-assertion of interrelationship between worldly
phenomenon. Published in association with Akar Prakar. Contents:
Foreword; Curatorial Note by Esclarmonde Monteil, Curator and Director
of Museum; World Within Worlds: by Surajit Sarkar; Intertwining
Inheritance and Practice: by Pranabranjan Ray ARTISTS: Aditya Basak;
Anju Dodiya; Archana Hande; G.R Iranna; Jayashree Chakravarty; Paula
Sengupta; Shrabani Roy; Surajit Sarkar; Sabyasachi Mukherjee (Designer).
