To observe breast cancer awareness month, and raise funds to support patients with their treatment expenses, Art & Soul Cancer Foundation has collaborated with Passages, an NGO that provides guidance, education and support, to come up with an art exhibition.
Curated by Brinda Miller and Tarana Khubchandani, the exhibition titled cARTpet will display a collection of hand-woven and tufted carpets in wool and silk that are reproduced from key artworks by some of India’s leading contemporary artists. We chat up Khubchandani for more information.
Art on carpets
“In 2011, we were invited by Maneka Gandhi to hold an exhibition of carpets in Mumbai. She was sure it would be a huge success and she was absolutely right. However, we were not involved in the production of the carpets and we had only a few numbers to sell. Over the last seven years, we have had umpteen requests from satisfied clients. We realised that art can be enjoyed and appreciated in any format, as long as it accurately represents the artists’ imagery and their thought process behind the work,” recalls Khubchandani.
She points out how this luxury product fulfills the young aspirational collector’s desire for a celebrated artist’s works in an unusual format — as a rug or a wall hanging. “I have since nurtured the concept to be done again with the artists of our choice and with the highest attention to detail and quality. I approached Brinda Miller, an artist, who is painstaking in her quest to be perfect and her inputs with design and an innate sense of colour selection, which was critical to the long production process. We spent months sampling, going back and forth with the three different production houses, we rejected designs, changed images, even cancelled some in the process. But we are delighted with the final products and have learnt a lot through this two-year process,” says Khubchandani.
Transferring the artwork
Selecting the artwork to be reproduced on carpets was not an easy task. Khubchandani recalls receiving encouraging responses from the artists who are always up to participate in fund-raising and charity events. “We chose three different companies to work on the production, based on the complexity of the images. After studying the painting and understanding the number and tones of colours and shapes involved, we created a graphic representation of the actual rug called a ‘visualisation’. It takes almost 35-40 hours to create a single visualisation of a 5’ x 7’ ft carpet,” says she, stressing on how important it was to pay great attention to the shades of colours used when transferring the artwork from the canvas to a very different medium — a rug.
“We select the colours from a pom box after comparing them to the original artwork. Since most of the images were sent to us on email, we had to make allowances for the different viewing media. Brinda was instrumental in this process, with her excellent colour sense. Then the vendor, who is in charge of production, decided on the different textures for the final rug with a mix of fine New Zealand Wool and silk yarn,” she says.
The production is a lengthy 10-step process, especially in this case where almost all the designs involve more than 15-20 colours. “The approved visualisation gets converted into an actual life size stencil. Simultaneously, the yarns (wool and silk) are sent to be dyed in the various colours. The most crucial step is to make sure the dyed yarn has come out exactly as selected, else the rug will turn out looking different than the painting. Then the tufting process begins,” she explains.
“The tufters tuft each yarn into the warp and weft of the base cloth. The tufting process of such a 5’ x 8’ rug takes up to 168 hours. Once the design is tufted onto the base cloth, the technical process of latex and finishing happens to give the rugs their final look. A team of skilled workers shear the yarns to give it a smooth and shiny look and interesting textures. After a period of eight weeks, we get the final product,” explains Khubchandani. The exhibition does not focus on a specific theme. “But what is unifying is the cause of raising awareness for an illness which is a matter of grave concern, and to that end, we are deeply grateful to all the artists who collaborated with us on this,” says the curator.
Raising funds for patients
The funds raised through this exhibition will benefit Passages. The NGO came into being in July 2000 as a result of Khubchandani’s personal brush with breast cancer and the realisation that there is a dearth of awareness as well as emotional and financial support for so many patients in the country.
“This programme focuses specifically on creating awareness and dispelling myths about breast cancer. This is done through multiple avenues which include seminars, dissemination of latest research, telephone helpline, breast cancer awareness camps all over Mumbai city and participation in awareness camps outside Mumbai, a medicine bank which provides treatment and drugs to needy patients in government and municipal hospitals, and so on,” she says.
ST Reader Service
The exhibition titled cARTpet will open on Oct 21 at Blue Sea, Mumbai (Noon - 5 pm), and continue at Gallery Art & Soul, Mumbai from Oct 22-Nov 1 (Mon-Sat: 10 am-7.30 pm & Sunday: 11 am-4 pm)
