Chandrashekhar Bheda unravels the fascinating world of textile murals | Textile Series 1

Chandrashekhar Bheda studied textile design (Dyeing and Printing) at Sir JJ School of Art. Next, he completed his post graduation from the National Institute of Design Ahmedabad in Industrial Design with a specialization in Textiles in 1988. Abir Pothi reports how such a large potential stored in textile materials has kept him excited throughout his professional life and how textile has been his main medium of expression, be it during practicing as a designer or as a fiber artist.

Myriad materials, many possibilities

With his work largely conceptual and client’s brief or need-driven, Chandrashekhar Bheda enjoys working with both traditional and technologically driven fabrics. He says that textiles offer possibilities of materials with features such as transparency, translucency, opacity, textural range, layering, sculpting, knotting, cut and stitch, surface manipulations and ornamentations, 3D structuring, constructing, linear character, pliability, and technological advantages, to name a few. Depending on the need of an idea or merit of utility in creating an expression, he chooses craft techniques and fabrics. The brief is either provided by clients, collaborators, or he conceptualizes it to suit the context. Sometimes, he studies and understands the technique first and then creates an idea around it. Bheda also enjoys mixing craft techniques, materials and genres to create a new language.

What are textile murals?

Talking about textile murals, he explains: “A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other permanent surfaces. Instead of directly treating the wall, one creates expression with textile materials and mounts it on the wall to become a textile mural! Tapestry is a common term used for any textile created either for wall, floor, ceiling or spatial needs, either woven, embroidered or appliqued.” If one looks at Indian traditional textiles used in histories as wall décor or murals, there are many examples of royalties using specially crafted textiles to décor their courts and palaces for public interactions and personal spaces. They also used textile murals in tents thematically whenever travelling or on hunting tours, he says.

Tapping into a rich heritage

“We in India are so blessed with a heritage of arts and crafts and our country has the richest handcraft and hand-weaving traditions with artisanal skills to match with makes a great opportunity to work with. We have weaving traditions of finest silk brocades, delicate Pashminas and handspun handwoven cottons, a large variety of durry making as well as Coir fiber amongst coarser types, fiber woven in Kerala. These offer a great variety of materials, techniques, processes, visual vocabularies and narrative to combine with,” he says. Collaborating with people armed with great skills ensures a very large range of ideas and opportunities to explore and Bheda believes that so vast is the scope of the medium that he has just scratched the surface.

Not a recent phenomenon

He does not believe that textile murals are a new thing on the market and explains how they have been made in India by traditional craftsmen practicing Matani Pachedis, (Mata No chandarvo), Nathdwara Pichwais (Backdrops), Kalamkari of Shrikalahasti, traditionally wall art form on textiles created with natural dyes and drawings, Block prints of Rajasthan, Thangka paintings for Buddhist monasteries and also brocaded or made as carpets to name a few! Famed French Architect Le Corbusier used large size colorful durries as murals in Chandigarh in his architectural spaces. Talking about the market response in contemporary times, Bheda shares, “In India textile murals of contemporary narrative are still new; however I have managed to have a good response to my textile mixed media works being used for institutional spaces. Often when architects and interior designers see what I do with textile they do get surprised and feel the potential of using these in their spaces too.”

A fascinating breadth of work

Talking about some of the textile murals that he has designed and the concepts behind them, Bheda says that often the themes for the murals are provided by brand enhancement agencies associated with clients or are part of the brief either created by them or a result of his understanding of the spaces for which the mural is intended. “With the craftsmen team at my studio Spider Design, I have created murals for Suzlon Excellent Academy with the abstract depiction of knowledge gaining process through colours and patterns inspired from five elements. The Head Office of Cairn India Ltd commissioned me to create 16 murals for their corridors, cafeteria, training hall and CEO floor based on the themes such as Aqua Crystal, Fossils and Deep Sea Life,” Another satisfying project was for Mahindra Group’s head office. “I made a mural conceptualized in collaboration with NID faculty and students through a course of space design I took. This mural was detailed out and produced at my studio,” Bheda shares. For the Suhana Office of Pravin Masalewale, he designed and created a Ras-Rang tapestry depicting the culture of food-making that is growing and experiencing while consuming.

A lot of experimentation goes into making one large piece. Craftsmen play skilled collaborators’ role in the process. However, making one piece often has many types of skills of craftsmen hence they play their part in sequence and at the end when he puts the mural together as an amalgamation then only one can see and feel the outcome. “My ideation and execution plan guides them in production. There is always an effort to modify their skills to suit the execution of an idea visualized,” Bheda says.

Bheda talks about some of the projects that extended opportunities to create some path-breaking work in collaboration with traditional as well as contemporary craftsmen from different parts of India. “My first series of large-scale murals got rolled out and installed in 2009 at Suzlon Excellence Academy Pune. The brand development team invited me to create murals for their multipurpose expandable hall with one large wall covering 700 square feet of space and four more adding another 700 sq feet as space dividers. Depicting abstraction of knowledge gaining process, I visualized the sequences using and decoding their SEA’s nomenclature into fluid tessellation based on triangular grid and merging of colors, textures and patterns inspired from five elements for five murals themed with Wind, Fire, Water, Earth and Ether with a contemporary treatment,” he shares. To produce these murals, Bheda had five groups of craftspeople with different sets of skills such as dyers, hand embroiderers, machine embroiderers, applique craft women, chain-stitch embroiderers of Kashmir and weavers! Over the period of six months, the pieces were made and installed. Applique and embroiderers had to be trained first to work on a large piece as they had to sit on the textile pieces and work on it.

With Cairn India Limited for their then-new office in Gurgaon, Bheda designed and produced 16 pieces in themes such as aqua crystal, deep-sea life and fossils which were the themes for the ambience of different floors. “I used shibori, tie-dyes, screen printing, embroidery, Barmer applique and shaded dyeing with handloom textural fabrics and collaborated with women artisans of Gramin Chetna Vikas Sansthan of Barmer to put together one series and rest were made in Delhi with local skills available around and in Delhi. The mural which I designed and produced on the concept developed in collaboration with the students and faculty team of NID Ahmadabad for Mahindra Groups head office board room was equally exciting as colorful tire marks emerging from each other telling an abstract story of success of the Mahindra brand was created!”

For the show Fracture: Indian Textiles New Conversations, supported by Devi Art Foundation, Bheda created a Flying Rug, with a novel weave where warp and weft do not cross at 90 degrees defying the established norm of weaving fabric, thus the resultant structure is constantly changing in density. “I created an entirely novel curvilinear loom to help me weave this durry, a takeoff from the Panja weaving technique. The outcome was an eye-popping textile structure suspended from the top to give it a flying feel. I am continuing to work further on the idea of spatially curved textiles,” he shares with enthusiasm.

Market conditions for textile murals

As we wonder what is the market that buys this art and how are the market conditions, Bheda answers by throwing light on the market share of textile art in the visual arts space. “Textile arts have been part of art space in the western world for many decades; however in India it is still in the beginning. This exciting medium offers the largest platter of possibilities yet still to be discovered by the art world here hence as far as market share is concerned it is negligible,” he says. “India understands textiles largely as traditional and community crafts rather than individual artists\’ signatures. However, fashion designers have been creating wearable arts as ceremonial wear. Irrespective of the number of curated shows slowly growing in India, individual fiber artists are still not sufficiently visible in the country. However, once buyers start seeing the potential, surely they will start responding positively! My present reach is largely by collaborating with architects and interior designers as they are the influencers for the spaces they work with.”

Versatility of use

The scope of exploratory application of textures, fluidity and a big range of physical properties of materials, large range of craft and ornamentation techniques, technological advantages are immense. From linear to two and three-dimensional and adding fourth as a conceptual dimension is exciting and that offers unending possibilities, Bheda shares. “Most important utility of textile murals is enhancing the acoustic quality of spaces, hence a great wall solution for theaters, cafeterias, institutional spaces and residential interiors. And while improving acoustic quality, if you can tell a visual story, value offered multiplies as experiential engagement of people using spaces is increased!”