I am Rajasi Patil, a practising artist and textile maker based out of Bombay. I graduated from Central Saint Martins, where I specialised in woven textiles with a background in fashion. I also have a penchant for photography. My interests lie in experimenting with unconventional materials and processes on the loom to achieve striking surface effects and textures. Although my work seeks its varied inspiration in everyday snippets of lived life, it is spurred mainly by chaotic, savaged, grotesque details of the everyday, things interlaced with but easily overlooked by the banalities of our peculiarly structured lives. I often work through photographs of these details, a complementary medium that dictates the materials and processes of my practice.

At its core, my work is a negotiation between control and surrender. The structure of the loom gives me a framework to hold chaos, but within that framework, I allow for intuition, disruption, and material disobedience. I’m often responding to extremes- grief and desire, fragility and resistance, the tenderness of memory alongside the urgency of survival.

I gravitate towards textiles because it, conceptually and practically, allows me to meditate on their fragility as a form while enabling me to transform their vulnerability into something that can acquire permanence, demanding technically challenging precision work. One which can craft a fabric that captures time and the memories ensconced and embedded within it.

My work is defined by material, textures and colours. Giving the material the intended depth and character is achieved through the structure of the weave itself and through the combination of yarns with different properties, thick and thin, shiny and matte, delicate and coarse, flexible and stiff, strong and fragile, felting and non-felting, etc. This play on binaries ties back to how I view life and my experiences growing up in a cosmopolitan city, surrounded by a maximum of contrasts. I treat weaving as both a technical discipline and a philosophical inquiry.

While I possess a very hands-on and playful approach, be it trying to mimic certain textures or conveying a concept, my idiom is honed by the singular balance that weaving brings through its penchant for mathematical calculation and poetic expressions. It allows me to create something slightly new each time, drawing me into the endless, meditative challenge of yet another intricate puzzle of possibilities.

In an age of rapid consumption, production and isolation, I want my work to be considered artisanal, linked with values of craftsmanship, such as creativity, human development, community, honesty, tradition and individuality. I intend to continue practising and pushing, exploring the boundaries of the traditional craft, studying its historical and cultural significance. Although textiles are a huge part of our daily lives, with extensive applications, I urge the viewer to engage in my pieces in a contemplative manner and regain sensitivity towards our surroundings.