Chanakya celebrates goddesses in the everyday and a 40-year milestone
Chanakya International is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a series of exhibitions across Mumbai that highlight the intersection of traditional Indian craftsmanship and feminine divinity. The events showcase the work of the textile house and its School of Craft, emphasizing the role of artisans in preserving cultural heritage.
Why it matters
It highlights the preservation of traditional Indian textile arts and the evolution of a major design house into a cultural institution.
Chanakya International turns 40 and refuses nostalgia: no parade of old collections, no greatest-hits montage of their collaborations with over 50 fashion houses, artists and institutions. Instead, the textile and embroidery house founded by Vinod Shah, with its School of Craft now 10, marks both anniversaries across three Mumbai venues.
Deep inside its Byculla atelier, in an enclosed grove called Kunj, fibre falls from ceiling to floor around a 9th-century stone Varahi, a boar-headed goddess. She belongs to the family, and has been “a massive source of inspiration” for Karishma Swali, Shah’s daughter and creative director of Chanakya International. Nearly two decades ago, while cataloguing the family’s antiquities, Swali found Indus seals stamped with seven female figures and wondered who they were. They were the Saptamatrikas, or Seven Mothers.
Fibre falls from ceiling to floor around a 9th-century stone Varahi | Photo Credit: Ryan Martis
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