REFLECTION:

While walking through the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, I carried with me our Rabari Project book rooted in the Rabari community, a documentation of stitches, stories and lived practices.

It wasn’t intended to be part of the exhibition, but rather something personal I had with me: a quiet companion as I moved through the space.

The Biennale itself is expansive. Installations stretch across rooms and courtyards, each piece carefully curated, framed, and positioned to be viewed, interpreted, and discussed.

It is a space where art is elevated, contextualised, and intentionally placed within a global conversation.

And within that, this book existed differently.

It made me reflect on how we experience art, and how we so often separate it from craft.

Art is something we go to see; curated, exhibited, framed within institutions. Craft, on the other hand, is something we live alongside. It exists in the everyday. It is worn, used, repeated. It is embedded within routine, within culture, within identity.

One is often positioned as conceptual. The other, functional. One is placed on display. The other is carried within people.

But perhaps the difference is not as distant as we think.

Because at their core, both are ways of holding and sharing stories. Both are expressions of time, place, and perspective. Both require skill, intention, and a deep connection to process just expressed through different mediums, contexts, and lives.

It was not mounted on a wall, not labelled, not part of the official narrative; yet it held stories just as layered.

Stories shaped not in studios, but in homes, within communities, and across generations of practice. The kind of knowledge that is not always written, but lived. Repeated. Passed down.

As I moved through the Biennale, the book quietly began to take on a life of its own. It travelled through conversations.

People paused, asked questions, flipped through pages, and lingered a little longer than expected. There was curiosity not just about what was inside the book, but about where it came from, who made it, and why it existed in this space.

In that moment, it was no longer just a book I was carrying. It became a medium of exchange.

If you wish to learn more about this book from the other two contributors of this project. Geeta Bhavesh Rabari from an artisan point of view and Gaelle Beech founder of The AnjelMs Project follow our Youtube link here.

The Rabari Project book is now live on our website: a continuation of these stories, held in print, but rooted in people.