WHEN YOU ENTER the Visual Arts’ Gallery, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, it seems as if you have stepped into the pages of designer Ritu Kumar’s diary. Notes, scribbles and personal accounts have been conjured to life through vintage textiles, paintings, photographs and memorabilia as part of the exhibition, Crossroads: Textile Journeys with Ritu Kumar.
You get a sense of flitting through time and space, as you get to experience the old market of Tashkent, with its exquisite ikat offerings in one corner of the gallery, and the weaving villages of Benares, with their lush orchards and rich brocade-work, in the other. By creating these intimate viewing spaces, dedicated to textile traditions seen during her travels to Europe, the Middle East and India, Kumar offers you the liberty…