Stitching Images, Weaving Worlds

Six artists seek inspiration from the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri to work across the fault-lines between craft traditions and contemporary practices, discovers Georgina Maddox.

- Georgina Maddox

In 1294, the Florentine Dante Alighieri introduced readers to the idea of individual time, cosmic time, and calendar time in his emotional autobiography Vita Nova. Today, when the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our understanding of temporality, it is quite fitting to have Dante's writing, composed in honour of lovers and muses, and addressing time past and time future, form the basis of a co-curated exhibition by Myna Mukherjee and Davide Quadrio.

The curators commissioned six artists from India and Italy to respond to this medieval genius's extraordinary body of work and explore his idea of 'transformative life'. Andrea Anastasio, Francesco Simeti, Marta Roberti, Puneet Kaushik, Raghava K K, and Shilo Shiv Suleman were part of Vita Nova, that was mounted first at Jaipur's Jawahar Kala Kendra from the 9th to the 22nd of March; at the Gyan Museum, also in Jaipur, from the 11th of March to the 11th of April; and at the Italian Embassy Cultural Center in New Delhi from the 29th of April to the 31st of May.