Carmona’s Talking Quilt

Upcycled denim, machine and hand embroideries, paintings and montaged photographs reworked as digital prints unfold the narrative of a Goan village. These unique artistic trajectories envisioned separately by mother-daughter duo Berta & Savia Viegas and Charlie Holt unfold rare narratives of family, community and village.

The denim fabric, though chosen by default, is imbued with symbolic power. Indians craved jeans pants from the 1950s. It was the gift one requested as a youngster when a father or an uncle was posted abroad.  When acquired the fabric was worn with a panache. People had their first coming-of-age party, their first success or failure, their first wet dream, first smoke, first date and first kiss in this ‘fabric of Nimes’. If one did not own one they could get away with stealing and borrowing it. Globally there were enough influences to enslave the Indian mind to jeans.  The hippies wore them, and so did the richer grungers and the hip-hoppers.

Hence using old denim was not only ecologically appropriate but proved a surface which came with a life of its own. One pair of jeans had been worn when the wearer witnessed the breaking of the Berlin Wall. Another had been worn when on a 24-hour escapade by a teenager on a bike escaping the wrath of his girlfriend’s father. Yet another when he proposed. The stories were diverse and powerful. The material used to print the digital images is khadi paper made from recycled material.

Many of the symbols in the quilt and the oral stories that have been farmed are stories of good counsel and cautionary tales once in oral circulation now in disuse because of the breakdown of the same. However, the core of these stories happened in real time and may have been embellished by the teller to increase their appeal and retention. So what Savia has done is merely unravelled these stories from the motifs and symbols on her mother’s quilt and hand embroidered them.

Machine and hand embroidery was always perceived as women’s work and reified in the artistic hierarchies. Hence rather than paint the stories, Savia chose to embroider them. 

Carmona’s Talking Quilt showcases ten stories that have a close connection to the motifs and symbols on the quilt. These have been embroidered on denim leftovers. The narration is synoptic, collapsing time and linearity. Multiple episodes of the story are placed in varied patterns within a single space. In some of the stories, the whole which is presented has to be taken apart for the story to make meaning. The pathway in some can be complex allowing the viewer to curate the story after they are familiarised with the text of the story displayed alongside.