Nakshi Kantha : Bengali Women and Their Worldmaking Through Woven Art

In the rural areas of Bengal in South Asia, women have long engaged in the tradition of weaving intricate designs onto layers of fabric known as Nakshi Kantha. Within the courtyards, verandas, and common spaces of their households, these women gather to hand-stitch these kanthas, blending domesticity with artistic expression. Before the rise of commercial production of Nakshi Kanthas in Bangladesh, the patterns and motifs were significantly influenced by the surrounding landscape and their daily life experiences as observed by these women artisans. My research delves into the complexity of the patterns in Nakshi Kantha grown over time and explores how these patterns evolved in different areas of the Bengal across the centuries. This research also demonstrates how this women-driven art form has evolved from a domestic activity to a form of women-led organizational empowerment. I claim that the Kantha-making process continues to preserve and engage with Kantha art as a source of entrepreneurship and employment, seamlessly integrated into their daily domestic lives. Through ethnographic observations, oral histories, and visual documentation via photographs and drawings, this research explores rural Bangladeshi women's memory-making processes and domestic practices within their households and communities as part of their worldmaking. Using Paul Connerton’s theory of embodied practices as a framework, I demonstrate Bangladeshi rural women’s incorporation of Naktha Kantha art as a form of social memory that represents their identities, beloved people, and everyday places.