How many hands did it take to make this show? That is to say, how many artisans, craftspeople, weavers and artists\u2019 hands did these pieces pass through? For this is a textile exhibition that doesn\u2019t just celebrate a short list of singular artists, but rather the many highly skilled craftspeople and communities repeating the stitches and specialities of their ancestors. Take Entangled Memories, Interwoven Stories by P\u00e9ro for example: it was made by 50 artisans and took 18,000 hours to complete. And that\u2019s one piece, in an exhibition that spans three galleries.<\/p>\n
These many hands and hours make Entangled and Woven an exquisitely beautiful exhibition. Every slip of fabric is layered with delicate detail and texture. Fabrics are airy and ethereal one moment, and weighty and dipped in deep indigo the next. It is hot, the fabrics sway and flicker in the fans, and hands flicker quickly in the video works capturing the creation of the pieces. I am mesmerised.<\/p>\n
Pe\u0301ro\u2019s Entangled Memories, Interwoven Stories, and Somi Ko\u2019s People of One, Continuum and Moment. Photograph: the Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photo by Michael Pollard.<\/p>\n
What elevates this show from \u201cit looks good\u201d to \u201cit\u2019s great\u201d is the fact it is also a true cultural exchange. The authentic type, where the artists have met in person, have visited each other\u2019s countries, and have made brand new works in response to these research trips. The exhibition draws together eight artists and collectives from Korea and India, inviting them to incorporate new techniques into their own practices, creating something new that crosses borders, culture and time.<\/p>\n
The Whitworth holds around 20,000 textiles from across the globe, and for this show it presents several historic Indian and Korean works, some dating back to the 18th century. They are carefully placed around the gallery, sometimes mirroring the new works and other times educating us on technique. It is hard for these pieces \u2013 primarily flat on the wall in frames \u2013 to command presence alongside the impactful contemporary installations, but they serve as a good historical reference point and a link to Manchester\u2019s past as a centre of textile production.<\/p>\n
In the middle of the first gallery is Gilded Veil_A Mysterious Curtain Lightly Draped in Gold by Jounghye Yoo. Suspended from a wooden frame in the ceiling is a tunnel of fabric sheets fading from indigo to red, bursting into glorious gold in the centre and back to red and finally indigo again. Inspired by the gate of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi, the shape of the sheer sheets is palatial, and as I wander through them they adjust slightly in the air, cocooning me in a surreal world drenched in colour.<\/p>\n
Young In Hong\u2019s Sacred Empires and White Cranes in Snowfall. Photograph: the Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photo by Michael Pollard.<\/p>\n
The work was made in collaboration with Dr Ismail Mohammad Khatri, a master of ajrakh block printing from Gujarat, and his son, Juned Ismail. Ajrakh motifs dance with Korean embroidery using gold thread, and Indian cotton sits with Korean silk creating a work that effortlessly blends varied skills and collapses the separation between heritage, culture and artists \u2013 even between my body and the gallery space as I disappear into this veiled passage.<\/p>\n
Connection abounds between the artists themselves in the next gallery where Somi Ko, Young In Hong and fashion brand and cultural practice P\u00e9ro play with weight, fragmentation, animals and teeny-tiny mirrors. Somi Ko\u2019s People of One, Moment is a series of figures on Indian cotton made using traditional Indian mirror work. As I draw closer to the dancing bodies, I see shards of my own reflection split and shatter across the gallery, releasing me from my fleshy form.<\/p>\n
At the other end of the gallery, Young In Hong integrates this mirror work into Sacred Empires, a series of ornate flags produced in collaboration with Kala Raksha, a grassroots artisan collective in Kutch, home to seven minority craft communities. In Indian folk belief, the small reflective mirrors are seen as ritualistic devices that ward off evil spirits and mediate divine presence.<\/p>\n
The divine \u2013 or the spiritual realm \u2013 is also very present in the third gallery where Kaimurai, Sumakshi Singh and Yeonsoon Chang make the unseen seen. Singh crafts an ethereal, floating bridge to highlight links between Korea, India and the UK. She embroiders on water-soluble fabric so when the base is dissolved, all that is left is a delicate web of threads, glowing against the deep blue walls in the gallery.<\/p>\n
An ethereal, floating bridge \u2026 Sumakshi Singh\u2019s Spanning the Void. Photograph: the Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photo by Michael Pollard.<\/p>\n
Kaimurai makes visible the process of meditation through stepped khadi sheets that reach upwards toward the spiritual realm. A combination of sculpture and painting, Kaimurai\u2019s work is arresting and intriguing. Beginning with a bell hung over a hefty granite sphere, his sheets of khadi rise up in stages, each with a graduating splash of indigo that gets smaller and smaller as if reality were receding.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Chang ponders on the Buddhist concept of Worincheongang, which means \u201cthe moon reflected on a thousand rivers\u201d. Her glowing structural pieces, dyed in indigo and shimmering as if possessing a divine power, enhance this sensation of togetherness both with the spiritual realm and the communities that dream under the self-same moon.<\/p>\n
Back in the main gallery, a mythical creature by Boito is made through the mingling of skills from across the Indian state of Odisha. A papier-mache chest comes from Raghurajpur; ringa textile and beads from Malkangiri; cane craft from Talabasta \u2013 the list goes on. It is an unusual creature, with a chicken\u2019s head, elephant\u2019s leg, human\u2019s arm and camel\u2019s hump, each boasting a different fabric and way of making. It is also the perfect symbol of what has happened \u2013 joyously \u2013 in Entangled and Woven: cultures combining to make the most striking works of art.<\/p>\n