Mughal-E-Azam is a 1960 Indian period epic film directed by K. Asif and produced by Shapoorji Pallonji, inspired by true events. A 16th century prince falls in love with a court dancer and battles with his emperor father.
A Spatial Installation for the movie:
Intent: Taking inspiration from the movie, to trigger a thought about acting upon your desires and not always get tied up by the norms of the society and to leave the concerns of being judged behind you.
Space: This epic movie reaches out and caters to its audience beyond class, creed and community so taking away from the movie, I did not want to restrict my installation into a single space and so decided to be the installation myself going around to my audience and not wait for them to come to the installation.
I wore something that does not fall under casual wear and would bring a lot of judgments my way( something I would be otherwise embarrassed of), watched people's reactions and asked them to share with me a desire that they have kept to themselves. The reactions I received motivated me greatly.
Greater learning experience came from interacting with the local artisans and working along with them. To understand the craft and then innovate it in the true sense with out forgetting its cultural context or blindly adapting it into another form of art was the task I set for creating my quilt.
Material constraint: With regards to the origin of the craft, all materials for the quilt had to be acquired spending not more than 200 Rupees. Shopping at markets of Ahmedabad keeping in mind the concept and colour palette I wanted to work with.
Working with Dahi Ben, my local artisan who otherwise does quilting for her home.
My concept for the quilt was to not take any singular emotion or experience from the movie but to try and capture those flashes that ran across my mind when I thought of the movie. Portraying from festivity to sorrow, love to repentance and honour to dishonour, utilising the traditional techniques of quilting.
And in contrast to the outside surface of the quilt the inner surface speaks of the Cinema that it is, the thrill, the speed the movie picks up. Also about the adaptation of the original black and white movie into colour changing itself with the time.
A Poster for my Quilt. Thank you Jyothi Iyer, Graphic Designer.
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Quilting Bollywood
The word quilting comes from the Latin' "cultic" meaning a stuffed sack .Quilting is more than sewing up two or more layers of material together. It was in itself, Bollywood. The many layers that go into it and the story of each fabric, that weaves itself together,add immense meaning to a quilt. This is my interpretation of the Bollywood movie Mughal-e-azam materialized into a Quilt which I hand crafted in partnership with a local Quilting artisan over two weeks.
