Untitled

Many of India's ceremonial and ritual textiles feature the sun, in the form of a splendid rayed disk, as a timeless progenitor and benefactor. This traditional image returns in this panel, embroidered densely with multiple metallic elements. It's symbolic associations are discarded and replaced with a seemingly familiar reference to the nature of time: a complex, self-contained mechanism that never fully reveals itself. The workmanship here revives a distinctive characteristic of India's historic metallic embroideries, which excelled in the massing of elements as closely as possible, to create continuous sheaths of metallic textures over fabric.

The final effect is powerfully sculptural rather than decorative, the delicate, pliable purls and sequins coalescing into unyielding plaques of embossed and engraved metal.