Oonch Neech

I recently enrolled myself for a summer course at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London- About A New Togetherness. A three weeks affair where I learnt a great deal about expression, interpretation, articulation and performing but most of all, I believe I've made my mother proud for she always wanted me to study at an architectural college. It would be an understatement to say that I attended lectures at the best there is. Thanks to the facilitators of my unit “The Storyteller,” Khaled Al-Bashir and Jumana Bawazir, I’ve been able to embrace the heritage I was born into- the craft of rug making, using spatial performance as an agency of imagining and building a space.

Image (above): A scaled down prototype of the imagined space

Growing up, I never wanted to be any part of the family business started by my grandfather in 1980’s. I was one for running away and made my way out pursuing industrial design in Mumbai. Working as a professional in the field finding myself completely out of the reigns of the trade, I thought I had successfully escaped. As destiny has it, I found myself back in my hometown in 2020 for obvious reasons. It was only during the pandemic, when I woke up to find out that the first thing that I step on everyday in the morning is a rug that my father designed. I was no longer the teenager who wanted to run away from the business. Going through this almost meaningless experience now as a designer I couldn't help but retrospect and cherish every moment I could remember of my association with the rugs in my house. From rolling them onto the cold marble floors in winters to playing on them all day everyday, and even dropping paint on the fringes and spending hours trying to get it off them. Over past year and a half, I’ve been involved in the craft visiting our facilities across India and learning the indigenous techniques and processes involved in the craft of making rugs.?

Image (above): A photograph clicked by my father at our facility in Varanasi from 1990's that inspired this project

With the help of the short course, I’ve been able to express a snippet of one of the systemic issues that the gradually perishing craft is facing in our contemporary times owing to the rapid acceptance of industrialisation and negligence of the artistic essence of the craft. Exhibited among others Oonch Neech is a conversation between elements of the process presented using a film called Oonch-Neech featured in The Storyteller Cafe at the Architectural Association on Sunday 24th July, 2022.?

It is a project that has finally helped me see beyond the artistic derivates and translating them into spaces which people can interact with. The image (under) shows the process I undertook to develop a scaled down model of a walk-in performative experience capturing the organic ways in which natural materials react to and absorb dyes. It is designed to transport the onlooker into the dyeing pot with a background score of the dyeing process and natural sounds of water droplets. In its further stages, this space will host a floor of a shallow pool with real fruit in it which viewers will walk on. In the process they will saturate the colour in the water as they squish the fruit. The yarn that features the imperfection or "oonch neech" is dipped in the pool and absorbing the colour in its own unique manner, presenting the conversation to the viewers.

The story itself is set inside a dyeing pot in post-colonial India. It captures a brief conversation between Afshar Kohi- an imperfect rug and Oonch-Neech- a fruit, the element it assumes is the reason for its imperfection. Performed through poetry, film and models- written in English assisted with phrases from the local dialect the multilingual poem, sets the scene of a 1990 Varanasi Ghat, the epicentre of rug making in India. As for the model and the film, they are glimpses into spaces in which the rug is made. The film is set inside a dyeing pot, and the model is the space where the rug comes in contact with the dye that colours it.

During the process, I captured the essence of the scene in motif inspired from a drawing and the poetry. Image (under) is the process of motif construction for oonch neech inspired from the elements of the landscape drawing- The Weaver's House and the poetry like: Paddle men washing; the rising mist, The rug hung on a wooden stand, The dyeing process of wool and the early morning sky. Translated in a block, the motif will work as a repetitive pattern in 10dpi.?

The poetic conversation captures a microcosm of the impact of colonialism and industrialisation on crafts like rug-making across the Indian landscape. It was inspired by a local legend of 132 rugs that were classified as “imperfect” or unnees-bees (19/20) by buying agents for the international consumerist brands in 1990.

The story also sheds light on the nature of communities involved in the process of rug making and the negligence they face due to the organic nature of the craft they resort to while also bringing out the relationship of blaming one another for externally identified imperfections. The performance raises questions about the violence perpetrated by colonial-led industrialisation and the associated ruptures it creates in historic societal, cultural and economic ways of being through homogenisation.

The Film and Transcript:

There is more about the same on my website. Hope you like it

Yashovardhan