Author: Ai Kijimia
When I arrived in Udaipur in October 2024, the city was alive with Diwali celebrations. Candles glowed in doorways and courtyards, marking the festival of light. It felt like a beginning touched by warmth and renewal. I carried no fixed plan beyond one intention: to listen.
For six months, I traveled through Rajasthan and Gujarat: Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Barmer, Bhuj, Gandhinagar, and Ahmedabad. Guided not by plans but by connections, I followed the places where traditions are part of daily life, where cloth is not only made but lived.
As an artist, I work with found textiles. I gather fabrics that hold hidden histories–a child’s cartoon bedsheet, a grandmother’s kimono, a scrap of embroidery from a forgotten trunk–and bring them together into new harmonies. What drew me to India was the opportunity to learn from communities where textiles continue to carry memory in the present.
During my time at Art Junction Residency in Badanga, a Bhil tribal village surrounded by the Aravalli Hills, I was invited into the daily rhythm of the community. I worked alongside women as they cut grass to feed animals and collected firewood in the hills. I was also invited to weddings and rituals, where drums carried through the night,children danced, and women sang. These experiences revealed how creativity and ceremony are inseparable from daily life, and they deepened my understanding of how art, work, and care sustain one another.
In Jaisalmer, I worked alongside Sindhi women stitching ralli quilts made for the home and dowry. Their steady hands built bold patterns, each stitch carrying love. Back in my studio, I carry those lessons forward: when I piece fabrics from across cultures, I attend not only visual contrasts but also to the connections that grow from creating together.
I also saw ajrakh in Barmer and later in Ajrakhpur, Gujarat, where artisans carry on the tradition of block printing and natural dyeing. They spoke of the challenges of sustaining the craft, yet their devotion continues to keep it alive.
In Ridrol, I visited the Royal Brocades workshop, where more than a hundred artisans weave intricate floral and geometric designs on jacquard looms. Each piece carries history in its design. Seeing this work firsthand, and meeting the people who sustain it, was a privilege.
Along the way, I visited museums and walked through markets, deepening my sense of India’s vast textile heritage. Yet what stayed with me most were the people, the families, artisans, and communities who welcomed me, and the connections built through shared time and respect.
These six months were neither tourism nor formal academic research.. I witnessed how these traditions persist through challenges, carried forward by the people who sustain them. My time was not about collecting techniques, but about participating in and learning from communities where art and daily life are inseparable.
In India, I learned how fragments of fabric, culture, and memory are alive, shifting, and carry stories of strength and tradition. Sindhi women stitching ralli quilts, artisans in Ajrakhpur pressing patterns into cloth, and weavers in Ridrol lifting threads of silk and zari demonstrate that textiles are not just material but vessels of belonging,identity, and devotion. From working alongside them, I learned how these practices sustain communities and connect generations.
The upcoming Textile Study Tour with the Textile Society of America in January 2026 builds on this understanding. Participants will engage directly with artisans and communities, joining stitching circles, observing skilled craft in practice, and sharing in the rhythms of daily creative life.
For me, the significance lies in fostering relationships built in respectful exchange and learning. For participants, I believe the impact will be discovering that textiles as living practices continuously shaping creativity, connection, and care today. Through India’s traditions and the people who sustain them, we can find inspiration to weave a future guided by harmony and thoughtful collaboration.
Ai Kijima, born in Tokyo, is a textile artist whose work reimagines quilting as a space of cultural exchange. She earned her BFA and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kijima gathers found textiles from Japanese kimonos to American vintage fabrics to create improvisational, layered compositions that reflect memory, heritage, and contemporary life.
