Fabric(ated) Fractures

Résumé du livre

Alserkal partnered with the Samdani Art Foundation to present, Fabric(ated) Fractures, curated by Samdani Foundation's Artistic Director Diana Campbell Betancourt. Fabric(ated) Fractures challenges ideas of nation, state, and territory. While this exhibition was born within the borders of what is now considered Bangladesh, the lines demarcating this young country are constantly shifting. The waters that move across its edges are shared with India and Myanmar, flowing into wider border issues that extend into Thailand, Pakistan, and Nepal --the countries that the 15 artists in this exhibition come from. Their works break down reductive national and regional narratives, and reformulate them from a more local and human perspective. Regional lenses, including overarching headers such as 'South Asia' or 'MENASA', tend to filter out the many traces of difference found on a local level, and this exhibition aims to weave a more complex picture of the vibrant and diverse threads that comprise a yet-to-be crystalised identity in the wounded border areas related to Bangladesh--which cannot be defined with a single regional framing device. The concept for the catalogue design took the traditional Kantha embroidery as its starting point. In a country with over 100 languages, the common 'thread' is the Kantha stitch which, for generations, has told the stories of the lives of the Bengali people. The idea was pared back to create a minimalist double-pasted cover, embossed with a running stitch design, with the catalogue title printed and embossed onto a paper 'tag' and pasted onto the textured cover. The catalogue spine is an exposed saddle stitch with threads woven into the sections, further referencing the embroidery process.