SHILLONG, Aug 21: The National Museum in New Delhi is hosting Sutr Santanti, an exhibition that means ‘continuity of yarn’ as part of the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to commemorate 75 years of India’s independence.
A resident of Nongrim Hills in Shillong, Ilamon Bansara Thangkhiew is among several textile artists and designers from across the country who were invited to showcase the textile traditions of their respective areas.
Ilamon is a graduate of the National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, Ilamon says she is excited and honoured to be invited to showcase a rare weave made from the ramie yarn. Her artwork titled “Hynniew Skum Hynniew Trep” is a wall panel made of this yarn.
Ramie is a vegetable fibre noted for its length and toughness and is a plant of the nettle family. The technique used by Ilamon involves weaving in three panels on a table loom size of 42×74 square inches and hand-weaving in three panels of 14×74 square inches each.
The panels are joined by hand-stitching and finished with tassels. She created this design and started working in July 2022.
Ilamon has based her design on the legendary U Lum (peak) Sohpetbneng peak, the heavenly navel and umbilical peak that symbolises the deep-rooted spiritual belief of the Khasi people known as the Hynniew Skum Hynniew Trep – the people of seven huts said to have descended on earth from a golden vine ladder atop the sacred peak.
Ilamon tries to weave a story through the yarn. She narrates how the seven huts descended on the earth, crossed the mighty rivers and settled on these mystic interlocking hills complete with fast-flowing rivers, waterfalls and caves.
It depicts the people’s way of life and their close interrelationship with nature. The first panel of the design represents how the seven huts descended on earth and crossed the rivers (panel 2) to settle down in their homeland (panel 3).
The three panels are joined and connected through an invisible thread that represents the connection between earth and heaven through the golden ladder. The seven squares represent the seven huts.
Using a mix of ramie yarn and raw fibre the weave depicts the common thread of interest, culture and tradition that binds the tribe together. The vertical spaces represent the large rivers and time-spaces the tribe had to travel before reaching their homeland.
The tufts of raw ramie fibre enhance the vision of the huts, the interlocking hills, deep valleys, sacred forests and living root bridges that connect the Khasi tribe to their nature. They also portray the stone monoliths erected in memory of men, women and events that changed lives and served as milestones in the history of the tribe.
Ilamon shares space with some of the biggest names in textile design such as Abu Jani, Sandeep Khosla, Manish Malhotra and textile revivalists such as Radhika Raje Gaikwad and Jesmina Zeliang of Nagaland under whom she interned.
The event was scheduled to be inaugurated by Union Minister for Culture G Kishen Reddy but was later inaugurated by the ministry’s joint secretary. Among the visitors was Sadhguru Vasudev who encouraged Ilamon to continue her work with fervour.
The exhibition is on until September 20.
