Citius — Altius — Fortius
100 years of India at the Olympics
CSC x JSW
In 1920, aboard the SS Mantua, India made history by sending its inaugural Olympic team of three athletes to the Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, marking a pivotal moment in the history of Indian sportsmanship. With Citius - Altius – Fortius, we honour this 100-year milestone by celebrating the grit and enduring legacy of the Olympic Games and its athletes.
Art and sports, though seemingly distinct, share a profound connection as powerful means of creative expression. By drawing parallels between these two disciplines and exploring their rich cultural contexts, Citius - Altius – Fortius, celebrates the indomitable human spirit.
Citius — Altius — Fortius was unveiled on August 9th at the 7th Arrondissement Town Hall, 116 Rue De Grenelle, Paris.
Commissioned by JSW Foundation and Sangita Jindal, Chairperson, these works collectively embody Olympism’s fundamental principles of excellence and community, while highlighting our shared commitment to preserving traditional culture through contemporary art.
Two of the three crafted works commemorate pivotal moments in Indian sports history: Sakshi Malik’s break through bronze in wrestling at the 2016 Rio Olympics and Neeraj Chopra’s gold in javelin at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The central piece, featuring a torch and a wreath, serves as an ode to human resilience and symbolises the continuity of the games from past to present. The works are meticulously handcrafted using a variety of materials and needlepoint techniques, such as couching, bullion knots, running stitch, crochet, and stem stitch, complemented by carpet-weaving methods like hand-knotting and hand-tufting.
Commissioned by JSW Foundation and Sangita Jindal, Chairperson, these works collectively embody Olympism’s fundamental principles of excellence and community, while highlighting our shared commitment to preserving traditional culture through contemporary art.
Two of the three crafted works commemorate pivotal moments in Indian sports history: Sakshi Malik’s break through bronze in wrestling at the 2016 Rio Olympics and Neeraj Chopra’s gold in javelin at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The central piece, featuring a torch and a wreath, serves as an ode to human resilience and symbolises the continuity of the games from past to present. The works are meticulously handcrafted using a variety of materials and needlepoint techniques, such as couching, bullion knots, running stitch, crochet, and stem stitch, complemented by carpet-weaving methods like hand-knotting and hand-tufting.
Art and sports, though seemingly distinct, share a profound connection as powerful means of creative expression. By drawing parallels between these two disciplines and exploring their rich cultural contexts, Citius - Altius – Fortius, celebrates the indomitable human spirit.
Citius — Altius — Fortius was unveiled on August 9th at the 7th Arrondissement Town Hall, 116 Rue De Grenelle, Paris.
Cosmic Garden
An artistic collaboration
between Madhvi Parekh,
Manu
Parekh, Karishma Swali
& Chanakya Foundation
Maria Alicata & Paola Ugolini
Supported by
DIOR
Open for viewing till 24.11.2024
Salone Verde - Art & Social
Club in Venice, Italy
“I recognized that if craft is an expression of the human spirit in material form, the craftspeople are artists who use the medium of craft to express their collective identity.”
KARISHMA
SWALI
A collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Cosmic Garden, honors the pluralistic beauty of India’s cultural heritage, featuring paintings and sculptures by Madhvi Parekh and Manu Parekh, and the evolution of their practice into a third interdisciplinary medium — hand-embroidery — presented through crafted works and sculptures created by the Chanakya School of Craft and its Creative Director Karishma Swali.
Curated by Paola Ugolini and Maria Alicata, the series of works embraces a multidisciplinary approach, dismantling hierarchies between the arts, roles, and genres. The project seeks to re-evaluate the mutual relationship between women and embroidery, transcending the confines of domesticity by bringing hand embroidery into the public sphere.
Madhvi Parekh's paintings depict formidable female deities surrounded by celestial beings and symbolic representations, inspired by Indian mythology. Unfolding like a narrative, she tailors each work to its required scale, expanding from a singular image into expansive, existential narratives. By blending childhood memories, folk motifs, legends, and figures with abstract subjects, Madhvi celebrates the profound connection between humans and the divine.
Manu Parekh’s work, which is also influenced by Indian cultural traditions, in contrast, incorporates aspects of Western modernism and abstract expressionism.
Manu Parekh’s vibrant compositions, characterized by broken lines, stripes, crosses, and floral motifs, embody the cosmic harmony of masculine and feminine energies.
Through his intuitive use of colour and bold lines, he engages in experiments with vibrant abstractions, sexual imagery, and figuration. His artistic responses extend not only to the influences of nature but also to the nuances of daily life and social issues.
Just as both artists celebrate Indian ancestral traditions and myths, where the spiritual dimension serves as a potent imaginative and creative device, the interdisciplinary works created by Karishma Swali and the artisans of the Chanakya School of Craft transcend conventional boundaries to carve out an artistic language firmly rooted in collective cultural histories.
BELONG
“Belong is a tribute to the spirit - common to us all, the wonder of nature and the interconnectedness of all life forms. Through this presentation, our endeavour is to honour the profound role craft plays in preserving our collective heritage and nurturing communities.”
Karishma Swali,
Chairperson & Creative Director,
Chanakya School of Craft
Derived from the transformative power of nature, Belong is a spontaneous immersion into the coexistence between man and the natural world. From it emerges a fantastical universe, where the interconnectedness between all beings, their inherent nature, and the ecosystems they inhabit come into sharp focus.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the interconnectedness unfolds: the central figures seamlessly integrate into the landscape, embodying a sense of profound belonging. The use of indigenous craft traditions further amplifies the narrative, underscoring the importance of preserving and celebrating artisanal legacies. The concept is brought to life by the meticulous arrangement of materials and techniques with threads secured using variations of needlepoint techniques such as couching, bullion knots, running stitch, crochet and stem stitch to create a Sfumato effect, a technique of allowing tones and colours to shade gradually into one another, producing softened outlines or hazy forms.
Belong was showcased at the India Art Fair, 2024 from February 1 – 4, 2024.
Belong was showcased at the India Art Fair,
2024 from February 1 – 4, 2024.
The Atelier: The Living Museum
April 1 2023 – April 22 2023
Chanakya International, Mumbai, India
Physical, spiritual and ecological themes from our natural world, and their implicit interconnectedness have been rooted in ancient and indigenous traditions for centuries. Our affinity for nature — its majestic wonders as well as its boundless mysteries — manifest in organic shapes and forms. Underscoring these thematic notions are a series of crafted artworks imagined by Artistic Director, Karishma Swali, and brought to life by the master artisans of the Chanakya Ateliers. Collectively, they create visual landscapes showcasing the mastery of hand-craftsmanship, reflecting the colours, energy, and harmony of earth, sea, sky and the cosmos.
Block Printing
Kantha hand embroidery on four layered muslin
This inherent talent is present even today, kept alive and vibrant through the
guru-shishya tradition of mentoring, the knowledge passed on personally and honed
through apprenticeship. Expanding on our rich cultural heritage and a three-decade long
creative partnership with Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of Dior Women’s
Collections, we bring forth a presentation dedicated to the creative spirit of our
master artisans.
Through their collective stories, we thread the past, present and the incredible
savoir-faire of India’s artisanal legacies. We welcome you to discover eleven schools
of hand-craftsmanship brought to life through this artistic collaboration.
Mention the form of craft here
Micro-beads,
Needlepoint
Techniques
Nabh Raat, Zardozi Technique
Toy Making, Needlepoint Techniques
Mūḷ Māthī / from the roots
April 1 2023 – April 22 2023
Snowball Studios, Mumbai, India
Mūḷ Māthī; From The Roots is a showcase of 22 large-scale textile artworks by award-winning Indian Artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh in collaboration with Dior and Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of Dior’s Women’s Collections, and Chanakya Craft Collective and Karishma Swali, Artistic Director of Chanakya Craft Collective. Curated by Asia Society India Centre, as a postscript to an original commission by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the scenography of her Dior Couture spring-summer 2022 runway show, the exhibition presents 22 textile artworks, along with archival material, in an Indian context and for Indian audiences for the first time
The exhibition is an homage to the Parekhs, whose practices have a long-standing relationship with vernacular artistic traditions, an ode to the legacies of embroidery-work and textiles, and a critical reflection on the possibilities of collaborations and patronage in the preservation and sustainability of craft-based artistic work.
320
artisans
3
months
340
square meters
(3,600 square feet)
This exceptional series of artworks was created by 320 artisans from the Chanakya Ateliers, as well as female artisans from the Chanakya School of Craft, a non-profit school dedicated to craft, culture, and women's expression, who partnered together for more than three months to embroider 340 square meters (3,600 square feet) of work entirely by hand.
The resulting interpretations become new works in their own right, poised between quotation, stylistic exercise, and interpretation, reactivated by the gesture of craft using the language of embroidery.
The Chanakya x Dior Retrospective
April 1 2023 – April 22 2023
Snowball Studios, Mumbai, India
The exclusive Chanakya x Dior retrospective featured 50 hand-embroidered archival pieces made with Chanakya across 16 couture and prêt-à-porter collections. Each season, Chanakya works collaboratively with the historic maison to innovate across various genres of craft and design to handcraft couture, ready-to-wear, accessories and fine art. To give insight into this process, each dress featured was told through a craft perspective, supported by its miniature design reference, raw materials and contemporary variations of traditional craft techniques.
ARTISTIC
COLLABORATIONS
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ALL THE COLLABORATIONS
ARTISTIC
COLLABORATIONS
Our artistic collaborations pave the way for the master-artisans of the Chanakya ateliers and the graduated women of the Chanakya School of Craft to work collaboratively with celebrated contemporary artists and blur the assumed heirarchies between art and craft.
Explore further on www.chanakya.schoolWORKS
Emerging from meaningful creative dialogues, Artistic Director Karishma Swali collaborates with the highly skilled artisans of the Chanakya School of Craft and Chanakya International. Together, they make artworks that transcend the distinctions between art and craft, forging a contemporary language that unlocks the infinite potential of craft.