Chanakya
Collection to Collaboration
Will be published approx. on 25. June 2026
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-88-572-5398-5 (ISBN)
Description
The first comprehensive book about Chanakya and its journey through art, couture and cultural innovation
This book is the first comprehensive publication on Chanakya, tracing its four-decade legacy of craftsmanship and its enduring collaborations across art and couture. Growing from its own collections, this book situates Chanakya's pivotal role of how Indian heritage skills have elevated the value of embroidery-based collaborations, prising open critical discourses of textiles, fashion and art. It highlights Chanakya's role which isn't limited to just preservation of traditional embroidery, instead engages a critical inquiry into material and methodology, intuitively charting a cross-cultural global discourse. Under the direction of Karishma Swali, Creative Director of Chanakya, the artistic practice is conceived as an archive of cultural ethos, where materials and motifs are reimagined as metaphors, shaping a contemporary and discursive visual language. Not just a cultural preservation and revival but a cultural expansion and evolution into newer collaborative forms of artistic expression, has been the effort of Chanakya which the book will accentuate.
This book is the first comprehensive publication on Chanakya, tracing its four-decade legacy of craftsmanship and its enduring collaborations across art and couture. Growing from its own collections, this book situates Chanakya's pivotal role of how Indian heritage skills have elevated the value of embroidery-based collaborations, prising open critical discourses of textiles, fashion and art. It highlights Chanakya's role which isn't limited to just preservation of traditional embroidery, instead engages a critical inquiry into material and methodology, intuitively charting a cross-cultural global discourse. Under the direction of Karishma Swali, Creative Director of Chanakya, the artistic practice is conceived as an archive of cultural ethos, where materials and motifs are reimagined as metaphors, shaping a contemporary and discursive visual language. Not just a cultural preservation and revival but a cultural expansion and evolution into newer collaborative forms of artistic expression, has been the effort of Chanakya which the book will accentuate.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Milan
Italy
Illustrations
180
Dimensions
Height: 300 mm
Width: 240 mm
ISBN-13
978-88-572-5398-5 (9788857253985)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jesal Thacker is an artist by training, but she chose to pursue scholarship in art instead of art practice. A graduate with a degree in painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, she engages with research on modern and contemporary Indian art.
Uthra Rajgopal is a Curator with expertise in South Asian textiles, holding former curatorial positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Whitworth in Manchester.
Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London. The author most recently of A Century of Tomorrows (Bloomsbury, 2024), he is currently Curator at Large for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Artistic Director for Design Doha (a biennial festival in Qatar) and editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation.
Isabella Rosner is the Curator of the Royal School of Needlework and Research Associate at Witney Antiques. At both institutions she researches and cares for nearly 500 years of needlework.
Amin Jaffer is Director of The Al Thani Collection, an encyclopaedic holding of over 5,000 works of art spanning millennia, representing the vision of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani.
Mayank Mansingh Kaul is a New Delhi-based independent researcher and curator with a focus on post-independence histories of textiles in India.
Karishma Swali is the Creative Director of Chanakya International and Chairperson of the Chanakya Foundation. With over 25 years of experience at the intersection of craft, couture and art, she has been instrumental in shaping a practice rooted in cultural preservation. In 2015, she founded the Chanakya Foundation to address social, economic, and environmental challenges through education and cultural sustainability. The following year, she established the Chanakya School of Craft-a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women through craft and the transmission of cultural knowledge.
Uthra Rajgopal is a Curator with expertise in South Asian textiles, holding former curatorial positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Whitworth in Manchester.
Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London. The author most recently of A Century of Tomorrows (Bloomsbury, 2024), he is currently Curator at Large for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Artistic Director for Design Doha (a biennial festival in Qatar) and editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation.
Isabella Rosner is the Curator of the Royal School of Needlework and Research Associate at Witney Antiques. At both institutions she researches and cares for nearly 500 years of needlework.
Amin Jaffer is Director of The Al Thani Collection, an encyclopaedic holding of over 5,000 works of art spanning millennia, representing the vision of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani.
Mayank Mansingh Kaul is a New Delhi-based independent researcher and curator with a focus on post-independence histories of textiles in India.
Karishma Swali is the Creative Director of Chanakya International and Chairperson of the Chanakya Foundation. With over 25 years of experience at the intersection of craft, couture and art, she has been instrumental in shaping a practice rooted in cultural preservation. In 2015, she founded the Chanakya Foundation to address social, economic, and environmental challenges through education and cultural sustainability. The following year, she established the Chanakya School of Craft-a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women through craft and the transmission of cultural knowledge.