The Open Studio / Ayushi Singh
Ayushi Singh
Traditional patola
A woven cloth, built again one painted square at a time
Red like the inside of a pomegranate.
Black that holds the flowers up the way night holds lamps.
Every petal has corners, small steps of paint.
Green leaves wait between them. Yellow buds point upward.
At the bottom, trees grow in a row of arches.
Gold lines run down the side like a hem catching light.
No thread here, only a hand that remembers thread.
The work
Ayushi Singh paints a patola textile on paper. She uses poster colour. Every edge in the pattern is stepped in small squares, as if each mark were a thread. Red flowers sit on a black field. Below them, flowering trees stand inside dark arches. Thin gold lines run along the side and the foot. Singh studies at Banaras Hindu University. Her statement says she wants to understand Indian textile traditions, not simply copy them. The work measures 59 × 42 cm.
- Theme
- Patola remembered in paint
- Material
- Poster colour on paper
- Size
- 59 × 42 cm
- Year
- 2025
- Edition
- 1 of 1
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Banaras Hindu University
- From
- Sandila
- Code
- RC-394
In the artist’s words
My practice comes from a close relationship with textiles, craft, and the everyday visual culture around me. Growing up in India, I have always been surrounded by fabrics, colours, prints, embroidery, and handmade objects. Over time, I began to look at these familiar things differently—not only as beautiful surfaces, but as forms of knowledge that carry stories, skills, memories, and connections between people. Textile design allows me to explore these connections through making. I enjoy working with processes such as printing, embroidery, weaving, tapestry, and surface manipulation because they give me time to understand the material. I am interested in the small details that appear through handwork—the irregularity of a…
