Shruti Gaonkar

🎉👏 @govandiartsfestival ✨🌸 is a joyous celebration of community with art. Come by and check it out. I will be there on 13&14th Dec from 3-5 pm facilitating a collaborative making workshop. 🌸💖 Shout out to the wonderful team of @fliesinmycurry for putting together this beautiful event. Made by local artists of the community it is heartening to see the power of creating together. 👏 textile art mural by @aravaniartproject 🌸 community textile art by @koshywada and wonderful textile artists of the Govandi 🌸 ‘Mohalla’ board game by @lambashake 🌸 & many more fun projects 👏✨

Through these workshops, we dive into the culinary traditions of Govandi, experiment with pottery and makeup, and deepen our understanding of climate resilience Stay tuned for day-wise schedule!! This festival is organised and curated by Natasha Sharma (@fliesinmycurry ) and Parveen Shaikh, alongside a festival co-ordinating team of Mansi Bhalerao, Tayyaba Darvesh, Sana Shaikh, Archana Jadhav, Muskan Khan, Kulsum Sayyed, Saba Shaikh, Zaibun Shaikh, Sakina Khan, Nishna Mehta (@nishnamehta ) and Mugdha Shejale (@maggieintheloop ) Join us for five days of celebration, creativity, and collective power in the vibrant corners of Govandi from 10–14 December 2025. This festival is made possible by IMC India and UNESCO x SEVENTEEN’s Going Together Grant Scheme 2025. Proudly hosted by the community of Natwar Parekh Colony and Community Design Agency

‘Unya’ The indigenous wool of Deccan used to make Kambli blankets is naturally black. I carried the wool from the weavers communities around Challakere Karnataka . This ancestral craft is rapidly shrinking in the Deccan region. Sourcing the fibres I found the material to be very strong, felt able and uniquely textured. Through seeing, using, listening and caring for this vibrant matter I dove into imagining another world. Where these fluid beings rise from boulders, they are ‘Unya’ the fierce, soft and resilient ones. They are voices of ‘Shunyaverse’. Photo by @sachaparent ✨

‘Boulder Bodies’ made by hand felting native wool fibres hand dyed in plant dyes like natural indigo, madder, marigold and onion skins . Native wool ecologies are changing with climate crisis, hyper consumerism and extractive economy. These soft textured wooly bodies hold on one another , lean in and rest their cheek. Softness is resilience. Inspired by the ancient Boulder landscape of Hampi interwoven with myths and legends. Climate change is a mythological failure. We lack stories of survival that center care over conquest, softness over speed, interdependence over individualism. This new body of work is about, queering myth, holding space for repair and care, and imagining new kinds of kinship. A soft rebellion through storytelling and making.

Artist-in-residence Shruti Gaonkar (@shruti_artpractice ) explores native Indian sheep wool, a material often discarded despite India’s vast sheep population. Through research in Challakere and nearby towns, connecting with weaver communities who have worked with Deccani wool for generations. Using hand felting and natural dyeing, she has created resilient works that speak to ecological fragility and hybrid possibility.

Native wool fibres of South Asia come in a vast range from over 40 sheep indigenous species . Every year over 80% of this native wool is still burned as waste. Weaving industry in India is reliant on imported wool. This ‘waste’ is considered unruly and wild. I am reclaiming it, that which has been dismissed and devalued, much like the feminized, labor-intensive practices it comes from. I built a spectrum of hues and tones with Indigo leaves, marigold petals, waste onion skins, madder dried roots and pomegranate skins plant dyes on raw native wool. I am building sculptural ecologies with it, as material inquiries into softness, queer form, and slow time speaking to both ecological fragility and hybrid possibility. Currently building this ongoing research and body of work at @hampiartlabs ✨

‘Indigo Darpan’ my multichannel work has been showcased by the wonderful people of @pupandtiger 🌈 and @delere_press . Thank you Jared 🙏 for sharing this work which is very close to me. Also featuring the sound work done in collaboration with sound artist @joe_hirst ✨🌟 . Here is a snippet of the showcase and find link 🔗 in bio to the online publication to see my work and works by many more wonderful artists part of this amazing showcase. Jared has written the below text about this showcase: Crossing One is the first iteration of Soft Territories, an experiment from Pup and Tiger, a queer-run art space in Canterbury, UK. As we prepare to open a physical space later this year, this dispersed launch appears across both Dennis Cooper’s and Delere Press. It is a curated split-site showcase exploring porous, overlapping practices. For me there was something fitting in placing these works as an intervention within already living online spaces as a sort of teasing out or rewilding into existing habitats. It felt true to the spirit of Soft Territories, moving gently across platforms, not to claim space but to echo through it, to fold into what’s already there. I invited artists, and this is what emerged. ~ Jared

Research trips with @hampiartlabs have been so rewarding. Today I got to see handloom weaving, natural dyeing and also visit indigo plantation. Working with materials like fibres and textiles is being in conversation with all the people, their skills, their stories and the land and non-human beings. I am excited to see where this research takes me.

I am @hampiartlabs for this magical opportunity to be here for three months . I am blown away by the place and the space I have here to continue my research on local wool ecology. I was able to meet local artisans who work with native sheep wool of Deccan region. Last slide is my new beautiful studio space here, ready to get started and experiment with native wool fibres. Waiting to see where this journey takes me.

@hampiartlabs Announcing Batch 7 (July–September 2025) at Hampi Art Labs Meet the artists joining us in residency this season with focus on sustainability and natural materials. Introducing: Aaryaa Velani & Gandi Jeswant Designers and collaborators from NID Assam, Aaryaa (@_aaryaa02 ) and Jeswant (@jeswant__ ) work with fibre-based materials and community-led processes, exploring how craft, landscape, and memory shape resilient ways of living. Gurjeet Singh (@softgurjeet ) Chandigarh-based Gurjeet is the first artist in his family. His playful and poignant soft sculptures using discarded fabrics give him a voice while exploring identity, queerness, and sustainability. Prasad Hettiarachchi (@kalasouthasia ) Colombo-based visual artist Prasad (@prasad_hettiarachch ) reates community-engaged works that respond to urban transformation, gentrification, and the erasure of memory through development-driven change. Shruti Gaonkar (@shruti_artpractice ) Mumbai-based artist, architect, and facilitator Gaonkar works at the intersection of textiles, performance, and feminist theory - crafting soft, speculative ecologies. Sacha Parent & Valentine Tiraboschi (@villaswagatam ) Designers and artisans trained in France, Sacha (@sachaparent ) and Valentine (@valentine.tiraboschi ) merge ancestral craft with contemporary design to shape enduring, ornamental forms grounded in the decorative arts.

👏👏Thank You Woven Festival for this fantastic opportunity to bring the Textile Time Machine to World Stitch Day 🥳 @campervan_collective will return for @woveninkirklees on June 28th at Dewsbury Arcade 😍🥰🤩 #textileart #womenartist

👏👏Thank You Woven Festival for this fantastic opportunity to bring the Textile Time Machine to World Stitch Day 🥳 @campervan_collective will return for @woveninkirklees on June 28th at Dewsbury Arcade 😍🥰🤩 #textileart #womenartist