Govandi Women’s Textile Map Project Selected for Display at Kochi Biennale

A tapestry project mapping the lanes of their neighbourhood -some real and some aspirational – like their schools, hospitals, food joints, garbage and roads, made by five women of Govandi has been chosen to be exhibited at the ongoing Kochi Muziris Biennale, India’s longest running contemporary art exhibition in Kerala.

The project was part of the recently concluded Govandi Arts Festival, and was selected along with three photography works by youth of the area in the Students’ Biennale section.

Titled Har Gully, Ek Gaon, the textile art project started as an exercise to map the routes the women took from their houses to a local community space named Awaz. It ended up becoming a colourful visual record of the shared history of the area, what exists and what they wish existed.

For instance, 38-year-old Samira Khan, said that she began working with textile as part of helping with the household’s livelihood after her father passed away when she was young.

“It was work but I enjoyed stitching, design, and zardozi thread work. For the project, there were initially over 20-25 women and we were told to draw what we see in our neighbourhood. If someone were to explain our area if they had never been here, what would we show?” Khan said.

She added, “We then began drawing our neighbourhood’s shops, vegetable stalls, the schools here, and clinics. But along the way, we also began thinking about what we wished was present in the area, like good roads, a good hospital, open spaces and we mapped those too with our threadwork and embroidery.”

Eventually, as the other women could not continue, Khan along with Afsana Shaikh, Ruksana Qureshi, Rubina Shaikh and Shaheen Shaikh.

Some of them got involved while dropping their children to the Arts initiative. Ruksana, 45, said that her daughter was involved in a creative arts programme, and the textile project at the community centre piqued her curiosity.

“I had been doing needle work for a few years and have even made an Instagram page to showcase my work but this felt special as it involved collaboration with other women and collectively showing what our neighbourhood is like. We wanted to show the good and the not so good. We felt very happy that it has been selected and will be exhibited in another city for so many others to see,” she said.

The women worked on the project twice a week for two months, each having done the work on separate pieces patched to make the entire art installation with supervision from artist resident, Koshy Brahmatmaj. Some even said they took the pieces home to complete it while doing their daily work.

Initially it was showcased along with other installations, murals, exhibitions, exploring themes of the area like the food traditions, sports and art showing comparisons with village life.

The second edition of the Govandi Arts Festival, was held at the Natwar Parekh Compound in Govandi in December 2025, as a community-led initiative, with participation from local residents who were creators of content as rappers, performance and theatre artists, short filmmakers, and photographers.

“The area has a history of people being resettled here after displacement due to various projects. The Arts Festival held first in 2023, and now in 2025, is to get the people here to have the space to express themselves and in the manner that they want to, not as passive participants,” said Govandi Arts Festival co-founder and curator Natasha Sharma.