Baghs - Abstract Gardens @ the Brunei Gallery, SOAS
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 2021-11-01

A curator's talk by Karun Thakar on our exhibition 'Baghs – Abstract Gardens' of baghs and phulkaris, domestic embroidered shawls from pre-Partition Punjab, which was held at the Brunei Gallery SOAS 13 July - 25 September 2021.

Bagh, ‘garden’, and phulkari, ‘flower-work’, are cotton head coverings that were made in pre-Partition Punjab (the historical region that now includes Pakistan Punjab including the further northern edge of Hazara and part of the modern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh). Women carried out the cotton picking and spinning which would then be hand woven into coarse cotton cloth called khaddar. Rangarez, dyers would then dye the cotton to various red colours as well as indigo. All the embroidery was done from the back by counting threads in darning stitch using floss silk (heer). This technique was perfect for showing most of the silk in the front as only a single thread would be caught in the back. The front surface would show a much longer float of the thread, giving the traditional stitch by building solid blocks of parallel rows of darning stitches.

The exhibition featured over thirty examples of these shawls ranging from golden silk and red abstracted designs covering the entire surface of the pieces to more sparse floral embroidery work. Some examples showing architectural and figurative elements from Eastern Punjab regions were also on show.

This was the third collaboration between Brunei Gallery, SOAS and Karun Thakar. The previous two shows were ‘African Gaze - Hollywood; Bollywood and Nollywood Film Posters from Ghana’, and ‘African Textiles’, both in 2019.