Paper Details

This paper explores the changing methods employed by contemporary Bengali sculptors who combine experimental sculptural shapes with traditional textile art by employing stitched textiles techniques. In an area known for its rich textile history, including hand embroidery, patchwork, and kantha, this study explores how artists are recovering and reimagining these techniques within the context of modern visual language. The paper explores the dual roles of cloth and stitch as material and metaphor signifying the body, memory, resistance, and domestic work through case studies of chosen artists. These artists frequently use traditional textile techniques like patchwork, quilting, and kantha embroidery, reinterpreting them into sculptures that subvert the boundaries of fine art and craft, permanence and fragility, and tradition and modernity. The study's methodology examines how stitched cloth sculptures engage space, texture, and temporality in distinctive ways through visual analysis, artist interviews, and archival investigation. This study highlights how regional traditions are being actively modified by analyzing Bengali stitched-cloth sculptures within broader discourses of postcolonial identity, feminist art practices, and material experimentation. Thus, Threads of Innovation redefines form, authorship, and the fundamental fabric of sculpture itself by presenting stitching as a radical gesture rather than an act of adornment.

Hand embroidery, Patchwork, Kantha, Contemporary Bengali Sculptors, Stitched-cloth sculptures, Muslin, Jamdani