ARTS
There’s far more to be found in translation than lost. This isn’t only applicable to spoken and written languages, but also to the gamut of creative media: music, films, literature, food, fashion and visual arts. After painting for decades, in 2021, husband-and-wife artists Manu and Madhvi Parekh, who are now in their eighties, embarked on a creative partnership with Karishma Swali, managing and creative director of Mumbai-based atelier Chanakya International and Chanakya School of Craft, to transform their signature paintings and sculptures into tapestries.
“There was a quality in that instance,” says Manu Parekh, using a word that technically means “miracle”, but also suggests a sense of marvel or magic, to describe the moment that sparked the idea of adaptating his painting (2023) into textile form. The painting also lends its name to the title of the new exhibition , a collateral event of the recently opened Venice Biennale. Held at the Salone Verde—Art & Social Club, and curated by Maria Alicata and Paola Ugolini, the show marks the third exhibition between Swali and the Parekhs, who previously worked together to create pieces that constituted the backdrop for Dior’s with Asia Society India Centre at Mumbai’s industrial Snowball Studios, an exhibition which opened the day before the landmark Dior show took place at the Gateway of India. All the projects were realised with support of Dior and under the mentorship of Maria Grazia Chiuri, the house’s creative director, and featured a similar body of work of large-scale textile work based on the Parekhs’ artworks, which Chanakya craftsmen adapted and transformed.
