Nurturing modern and multi-national narratives through exchange of South Asian and Western traditional handcraft techniques

Chandigarh, March 30, 2022: UIFT hosted the fourth online lecture and valedictory of Shastri Indo Canadian Lecture Series “ Taking traditions forward: Preserving and conserving culture and heritage in the South Asian Canadian Diaspora”.
 
Dr. Anu H. Gupta, Director of the Shastri, Indo Canadian Lecture Series, and Chairperson of UIFT & VD, revealed that all of the lectures in this series emphasised the importance of cross-cultural interchange and the impact of tradition and heritage as a result of global contacts across borders. This is also true for the Indian and Canadian diasporas. She further advocated that the goal of this series is to expand knowledge, conduct more research on newly build up areas, and foster collaborations. For this series, 350 participants registered and about 100-150 participants joined for every lecture. Dr. Rita Kant, UIFT & VD faculty, initially greeted the event's attendees, guests, and resource person.
 
Professor Sudhir Kumar, Dean Research, Panjab University complimented UIFT for holding a series on such an important subject, and further praised for distinguished speakers and excellent presentations at each lecture. Dr. Prachi Kaul, Director Shastri Indo Canadian Institute, Guest of Honour elaborated on the initiation of this Indo-Canadian collaboration, which has had a long run of more than 53 years now. She emphasised the importance of this platform provided by Shastri Indo Canadian Institute where people connect with others across borders for intellectual exchange further adding many dimensions of future research and collaboration. She expressed her gratitude to the others in the team of sharing this vision of exposing the students to such international expertise and academia.

Dr. Satwinder Kaur Bains Senior Associate; Director: SASI; University Advisor: Canada-India Relations Social, Cultural, & Media Studies, University of the Fraser Valley, Canada and Collaborator of this lecture series echoed a similar expression of being able to contribute through such collaborative platforms, where the interactions highlight the actual global nature of academic. Each of the members shared the thought of continuing this chain of connecting the intellect, the artistic and the academic.

Dr. Tanya White from The creative School, Ryerson University, Canada made the session extremely enlightening through her nuanced and unique approach of connecting the research practices and teaching. Her presentation titled “Nurturing Narratives through South Asian and western Handcraft Technique” focused on making the students create a narrative of their own through their design techniques re-defined through a personal and artistic perspective. This technique according to her is empowering for students. She shared her creative work, which was a re-definition of the traditional weaving, knitting and crocheting techniques. Her talk was a blend of tradition, art and the modern technique describing the unique aspect of every single designer in the uniform of an artist as well. The tasks were described as exhaustive exercises of encouraging students through a process of finding an inspiration, and to find how the material can lead the way as one piece of design is worked over and over again into a polished end result. Another of her fascinations, was the phenomenal work by Shradha Kochhar, a textile artist who had presented on “From Farm to Fabric to Fashion”. Tanya believes that the handcraft and the different traditions behind it, Asian or otherwise have similar impressions which become the common ground to identify the common as well as the unique. She exhibited her work of a weaved and embroidered portrait which showed an extremely fine detail, an artistic approach and an execution of post-modern concept of fashion. Her aim has been to embody the designs onto body so that the real movement of the fabrics is acknowledged. Her unique approach proved to be a great pedagogical tool for various teachers who appreciated the effort of the Speaker in sharing her approaches of making the works highly impressionistic, organic and of an emotional dimension by attaching a narrative behind them.  Dr. Prabhdip Brar, UIFT & VD faculty, thanked everyone who participated and contributed to the success of the lecture series.