Chanakya and its artistic director, Karishma Swali unveil exceptional large-scale artworks with the visual artist Marta Roberti on the occasion of Dior’s Fall-Winter 2024 Haute Couture show. Commissioned by Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of Dior’s Women’s Collections, the crafted works bring out the connective potential of fibre art, invoking imagery of ancient goddesses and feminine energy to serve as the scenography of the Couture Show.

Under the stewardship of Chanakya’s Artistic Director, Karishma Swali, 360 artisans from the Chanakya ateliers and Chanakya School of Craft used over 80 hand-embroidery techniques to highlight the textile’s unique capacity for detail, colour, texture. Highlighting the excellence of savoir faire, the works include fine examples of crochet, running stitch, back stitch, satin stitch and honeycomb techniques, leveraging materials such as cotton threads, kaccha resham (raw silk) and lurex to construct an esoteric, immersive environment.

Marta Roberti is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her figural representations that bear the influence of surrealism. By studying and rewriting myths and representation, she weaves narratives that liberally float between Eastern and Western imagination. For the haute couture set-up, Roberti took inspiration from the mosaics of the central nave of the byzantine Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. Female goddesses such as Potnia Theròn, Isis and Shitala Mata are accompanied by various animals and set against a vegetal background of palm trees and other plants typical of the Mediterranean.

Marta’s delicate and powerful tribute to the goddesses of the ancient world is further enhanced by the artisans at Chanakya and the Chanakya School, who layer thread upon thread within the works. The harmonious interplay of celestial, animal and human elements is brought to life by joining metal and silk threads to create a mindscape that is both luminous and mysterious; delicate and boundless.

By weaving exceptional collaborations with Maria Grazia and Dior, Chanakya and Karishma Swali celebrate the transmission and plural beauty of Indian savoir-faire. At the convergence of art, craft and haute couture, the commission of such large-scale embroidered works dismantle the barriers between craft and high art, allowing them to cross-pollinate, inspire, and enable a conceptually rich result.