Khaki Tours

#StoriesFromSnippets – Meaning-making Through Discards Online Talk by Medha Bhatt: Talk 306

Date: 21-Feb-2026 | Time: 18:00:00
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The environment plays an important part in the lives of India’s traditional communities. In the arid land of Kutch, each house has a tree applique wall hanging. Without being aware of the words “upcycling” or “recycling,” traditional Rajput communities practise the concepts religiously. The exotic patterns of their textiles are not woven, but actually a patchwork of discarded textiles stitched together. The narrative art of beadwork of Kathiawar is inseparable from the producer's life, and assimilates within it nature-inspired themes. At our Online Talk #StoriesFromSnippets, textile designer and crafts researcher Medha Bhatt illustrates her journey of 25 years, from researching traditional applique textiles of Kutch and beadwork textiles, to expressing the rich natural heritage and the organic rice wisdom of the farmers of Kerala as living heritage in her work using discards, to create narratives of environmental consciousness. Every discarded textile scrap resurrects to form a part of the narrative infused with unique meaning. She also uses the concept of ecosystem analogy in our diverse Indian languages to raise environmental consciousness through her art.

 

About the speaker
Medha Bhatt is a textile researcher, educator, and artist as well as advocate of sustainable approaches to craft, design, and education. She has worked on women’s empowerment and the recognition of textile crafts as women’s creative and analytical knowledge-systems. She is passionate about incorporating anthropological methods and knowledge in craft research. Through her design studio First Forest, she creates up-cycled art and craft products from household and tailor-discards. She has participated in Pattanam Archaeological Excavations Season VI in 2012 and has presented her ethnographic research on Trade beads & Bead-work of Gujarat at the British Museum, London in 2012 and at the Textile Society of America Symposium in Savannah, Georgia in 2016 and Vancouver, Canada in 2018. She is also a recipient of the INTACH-UK Project Grant for this research in 2013.

Venue

Zoom
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