Sewn Narratives

When the earthquake of 2001 shook the region of Kutch in India, it brought to fore lost memories of partition for a community of traditional embroiderers and a new form of narrative. At a visitor’s suggestion, the reluctant women worked through their trauma of the earthquake by embroidering their experiences as narratives in stitches. They had not attempted storytelling of this kind before; but once they did, they found a voice. A voice that not only described the plight of people in difficult times of the earthquake but also the one that recalled other difficult forgotten times. The women went on to narrate personal stories of migration, stories of childhood and stories of how they came to work together as a collective, through a medium they knew best. The embroidery and appliqué was no longer limited to making decorative household pieces; it spoke about their aspirations, fears and joys through narratives. The embroidered cloth became a way of piecing together an identity. The women wanted to claim their artist identity as against the imposed artisan identity and looked for ways to celebrate their work. Thus began my engagement with them, a year long journey in which we collaborated to make an animated documentary, where their stories are told in their own voices through their medium of embroidery and appliqué. The cloth comes alive with stories recounted by multiple voices. The viewer is invited to construct their own narrative. In this chapter we discuss how a narrative becomes a bearer of memory and is collectively constructed through collaboration between the artists of Kutch, their narratives, their art, the language of animation and my engagement as the film maker.