Member Monday with Nikita Shah

Meet TSA member Nikita Shah, Brooklyn-based textile artist, fashion designer, and educator, whose practice is rooted in the ancient South Indian tradition of Kalamkari. Through hand-drawn narrative cloths, collective storytelling, and embodied memory, Shah explores themes of migration, gender, grief, and healing. From saris to storycloths, and from workshops to drag performances, her work reclaims craft as ritual, resistance, and art.

(TSA) Tell us a bit about you and your work.

(NS) My name is Nikita Shah (b. Mumbai, India) and I am a Brooklyn-based textile artist, fashion designer, and educator working with Kalamkari, a 3000-year-old textile tradition currently practiced exclusively in Sri Kalahasti, India. I follow its most traditional methods, using a bamboo kalam (pen) and natural dyes sourced from minerals and plants.

While Kalamkari is widely associated with Chintz, tree of life motifs, and the rich chay (madder) pigment, my work focuses on its lesser-known lineage: narrative storycloths, known locally as Vratapani (Telugu for “writing work”).

My practice centers self-expression, embodied memory, and collective storytelling. Drawing from intergenerational knowledge and lived experience, I explore themes such as the somatic impact of abuse and the grief of being a woman within patriarchal systems and migration. 

I practice the convergence of clothing, textile, and visual art through Kalamkari’s narrative potential of storytelling as well as its trade history as chintz. 

(TSA) Do you have a first or favorite textile memory?

(NS) One of my earliest textile memories is of my mother and the way she cared for her fabrics. While most women in Mumbai had moved to the ease of polyester, my mother still washed her indigos separately, starched her cottons, and treated each textile with the kind of care you’d give a child. That relationship with cloth-nurturing it, respecting it- has stayed with me through migration. It’s become central to how I think about textiles today.

But my favorite textile memory is from 2022, when I was invited to view historic Kalamkaris and Chintz pieces at the Ratti Textile Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. My mentor, Mamata Reddy-a Kalamkari revivalist-happened to be in the U.S. at the same time and flew into New York for a day. We saw these works together; designs we had studied in India only through books and grainy reproductions. To witness them in person, with her by my side, was a rite of passage. It was emotional, overwhelming, and filled with tears of joy.

(TSA) Do you encounter any misconceptions about your work and how do you address these?

(NS) The biggest misconception I get about Kalamkari is it being called a “print”. While there is a separate cluster in Machlipatnam that took to a block-printed version of Kalamkari- in its origin and roots, Kalamkari is a free hand-drawn textile art. As one looks at historic pieces one can trace “different” hands in line quality, faces, figures, between different pieces. I’ve looked at Kalamkari as an art-based practice for ritual and expression as opposed to mass-production, as craft is often looked at. Craft is often invited into the mainstream through mass production. Instead, I look at Kalamkari as an art-based practice for ritual and expression

(TSA) Does your work tend to reflect a communal process or more of an individual practice (or both?)

(NS) Much of my knowledge comes from oral traditions and time spent living and working alongside artisan communities across India. That way of learning-through clusters, workshops, shared meals, and hands-on making-has deeply shaped my process. So even though many of my visual artworks are rooted in self-portraiture and personal expression, my practice is inherently both individual and communal. The initial inspiration for my work often comes from personal lived experience and self-expression, but the healing, the meaning-making, and often the form itself emerge through reflection and exchange with others.

I carry  this approach into my current projects by creating similar spaces of shared practice. One of the most meaningful expressions of this is my teaching pedagogy, Fursat.  Translating to “leisure, freedom, and rest,” Fursat is inspired by the slow, intentional processes of traditional textile techniques. It encourages participants to create at an unhurried pace, allowing space for reflection, exchange, and collective making.

Another example of this communal ethos is At Home in Brooklyn—the first Kalamkari storycloth of its kind. This project brought together over twenty senior, queer, and migrant residents of Brooklyn to share their personal definitions of home. These works are communal not just in form but in spirit: they’re built from collective memory, lived experience, and mutual care.

(TSA) Do you have any textile-related books or resources that you particularly recommend?

(NS) Marg Magazine, https://marg-art.org/ and MAP Academy, https://mapacademy.io/ are one of my favorite craft resources. 

Some of my go-to-books are: 

(TSA) Are you actively collecting textiles? What are you collecting and why?

(NS) I have been collecting textiles for the last 15 years, ever since I began working closely with weavers and artisans across India. Most of my personal collection is in the form of saris. I’m drawn to pieces that are contemporary within their tradition-works that reflect innovation while staying rooted in lineage. 

A recent sari I collected is from Machilipatnam, a region known for Kalamkari’s block printed version. Traditionally, artisans there use wooden blocks, but this particular master printer (Pitchuka Srinivasa) has begun crafting blocks using fine metal strips. The result is an extraordinary line quality-more delicate and intricate than wood can achieve.

One of the largest parts of my research collection are Kalamkari story cloths  from the 1940s and ’50s. These pieces reveal the distinct hands of individual artists, each with their own bodily gestures and painting styles. As I continue field visits and spend time in artisans’ archives, I keep adding to my Kalamkari collection, drawing inspiration and building an archive for future study.

My primary intention as a collector is to gather evidence of handmade creation – whether that’s “samples,” “first attempts,” or even “mistakes.” These pieces hold traces of the human hand, process, and experimentation, and that is what makes them valuable to me.

(TSA) How do you imagine that humanity might engage with textiles in the future? 

(NS) One of the most meaningful lessons I’ve learned during fieldwork in Sri Kalahasti is that the native term for Kalamkari is Vratapani, which translates to “writing work.” Historically, this referred to the practice of illustrating religious texts for temple patrons. For the master painters, the act of making was not just about producing an image-it was a form of ritual, devotion, and worship. The process itself became sacred.

As we imagine how humanity might engage with textiles in the future, I hope we can carry this spirit with us. Whether as makers or as consumers, there is value in approaching textiles with care, attention, and reverence; not just as commodities, but as carriers of meaning, memory, and labor, as stories. We can learn from the past by recognizing the act of making as a relational process, one that connects us to materials, to history, and to one another. The future of textile is storytelling.

(TSA) What projects are you currently working on?

(NS) I’m currently working on a visual art piece for the When Eyes Speak festival in San Francisco, which explores stories of nostalgia and memory among South Asian women in the diaspora. 

I’m also looking forward to the release of my short experimental film Sari, Not Sorry, created in collaboration with drag queen LaWhore Vagistan to be showcased as a part of the New Sari Show at the New Historical Society. The film sources saris from weavers, artisans to reimagine the garment within drag performance and questions the tension between textile as costume and as dress between adornment, identity, and labor. 

Find more: www.sari-notsorry.com

---

Nikita Shah (b. Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York exploring the convergence of fashion, art, and healing. She is best known for her work in Kalamkari, a 3,000-year-old textile art, wearing saris in everyday life and Fursat, a pedagogy – drawn from the South Asian concept of leisure, reflection, and wisdom which centers community through textile traditions. The only Kalamkari practitioner in the US, Nikita researches on pictorial and narrative story-cloth’s and uses it as a medium to create visual art centering stories of gender identity, mental health, geopolitics, home and gathering community. 

Nikita received her bachelor’s degree in 2012 from the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Kannur, India and completed an Associate Degree in Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC in 2019. She has worked with multiple fashion export and design houses in India and the USA. In 2021 she launched her brand “untitle,” focused on an eco-conscious commitment to upcycle memorial clothing and dead stock textiles sourced for artisans in India.  

Her work has been featured in publications and institutions like Paper Magazine, Juggernaut, The Hindu, Asia Society, Twelve Gates Arts, the Textile Society of America, New York Textile Month, Amherst College, Tufts University, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Bloomberg, Shopify, amongst others. In 2024, she was awarded the Brooklyn Arts Fund for At Home in Brooklyn, the first-ever communal Kalamkari Story-Cloth. Forthcoming publications include, “Henna’s New Medium: Dilemmas in Translating Color and Culture from Skin to Cloth,” in the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles, Vol. 4: Color, co-authored with Matthew Raj Webb. 

Learn more: www.un-title.com/about

Social media links : www.instagram.com/nikita.untitle/