Rakhi Peswani. Being and Becomings - (K)nights of Slow Mutations. Satin fabric, Cotton fabric, Organdie fabric, Organza flowers, acrylic stuffing, rope, hand embroidery, gauze, galvanized iron wire and safety pins. 2008.

A Stitch In Time

Featuring an array of body parts Rakhi Peswani's works negotiate the differences between art and craft. Janice Pariat tells us more.

THERE ARE MANY IDEAS AN ARTIST MIGHT EXPLORE THROUGH THE USE of fabric. Jagannath Panda, who mainly utilizes floral-patterned material for his installations, plays with our notions of the natural and the man-made. Anita Dube, on the other hand, wraps familiar objects with velvet or camouflage cloth to both transform and conceal. The focus of Rakhi Peswani's solo Intertwinings at Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi, from the 21^st of August to the 25^th of September however, was the sheer joy (and pain) of creation - especially appropriate since Peswani's work involved laborious manual processes. There were some clear examples of this. The diptych On the Rules of the Game depicted two pairs of embroidered hands - the first one stitched a piece of velvet and was placed under the words 'every stitch is also a prick', while the second cleverly showed the right hand embroidering the left under the line 'every stitch is also a trick'.