Milan To Host Exhibition Of Works Of Nakshi Kantha Artists From Bengal
The Kantha Ghar exhibition featuring Nakshi Kantha saris made by women from Shantiniketan and adjacent villages will be displayed in Milan.
Published : August 3, 2025 at 3:08 PM IST
Bolpur: West Bengal’s textile art of Nakshi Kantha will make its presence felt in Milan in Italy on the eve of 2026 Winter Olympics. People from all over the world will be gathering at Milan and Cortina for the Winter Olympics.
Ahead of the Olympics, the Kantha Ghar exhibition featuring Nakshi Kantha saris made by women from Shantiniketan and adjacent villages will be displayed in Milan.
This is an exhibition that was presented as an entire Nakshi Kantha Ghar in Shantiniketan on November 27, 2024 and has been traveling across various countries at the initiative of the alumni of Visva Bharati Kala Bhavana in collaboration with Bengal Binal. The artworks of about 100 women artists will be exhibited at Milan for which preparations are in full swing at the Gabaa studio in Shantiniketan.
The Shantiniketan exhibition in 2024 that was held at Subhaspally saw the arrival of many prominent people including Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee.
One of the entrepreneurs Ritushree Mondal who is an alumnus of Visva Bharati Kala Bhavana, said, "As part of the Bengal Binal, we made a Kantha Ghar involving 104 women artists. This Kantha Ghar is being transformed and is going to the PAC Museum in Milan. The artists have woven the stories of their lives with thread while taking care of their families.”
About 100 women artists from Birbhum's Shantiniketan, as well as nearby villages like Dubrajpur, Sattor, Kopai and Bhubandanga have depicted their own life stories through the weaving of saris.
Usually, Kantha stitch work is done on saris, blouses, and bed sheets. Various designs, patterns, flowers, leaves, birds, etc. are delicately woven with needles and threads. But in this case, it is a completely different affair.
The women of rural Bengal, after completing all the daily household chores like cooking, ironing clothes, washing dishes, cleaning the house, bathing and feeding their children, sending them to school, etc. have sat down with a needle and thread to depict untold stories of their lives.
Some have told stories of their returning from school as children while others have depicted memories and stories related to their families. This is not only a work of art, but also a unique form of literature.
A Nakshi Kantha Ghar of 200 such saris will be exhibited in Milan ahead of the February 2026 Winter Olympics. It will start on November 25 at the PAC Museum for which invitations have already been sent from Italy. Artists Rabiul Khan and Ritushree Mondal of Visva Bharati Kala Bhavana will travel to Italy for the exhibition. The curators of this exhibition are Delhi's Raqs Media Collective and Argentine artist Ferran Barenblit.
One of the finest references to the art of Nakshi Kantha comes from Palli poet Jasimuddin's narrative poem 'Nakshikantha Mat' published in 1929. It narrates the tragic love story of a young man and woman. Nakshi Kantha means a place for autobiography. The women artists of Birbhum have done justice to this concept.
Artists Mousumi Laha, Sekhrun Bibi and Papia Majumdar said that they have been working on Kantha stitch for a long time. But they never thought that they would design the untold stories of their lives on saris.
“Rabiul, Ritushree and Surjit taught us. We did all the housework and then made the saris. We can't explain how happy we are that our work is going abroad and will be exhibited. Earlier, people at home would say what would happen if we did this work. Later, when the first exhibition was held at Shantiniketan, many people came to see it and their perceptions changed,” they related.
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