Anitha N. Reddy

Anitha is a community-based art practitioner and researcher working with textiles for the past decade and has been involved with the marginalized Siddi (African-Indian ancestry) community quilters from Uttara Kannada and Dharwad district. This socially engaged project with the Siddi’s has given them a livelihood and made them more visible. Siddi is an umbrella term used to refer to people of African descent across Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra states of India. While they have adopted different religions, they consider themselves as Siddi foremost. The Quilts (Kavands) transcend and literally bind the community. The women use flattened layers of old, worn clothes traditionally gathered from members of their own households to create them, which subsequently hold cultural and sentimental value. One significant aspect of Kavand-making is its recyclability. The women use worn clothes collected from the family to create them, ensuring nothing goes to waste. “I wanted to keep that intact, and so had to find my own sources to provide them with material,” she says. The material Reddy now procures is surplus export reject garments and fabric scraps from tailors, garment factories, and boutiques. While the size, shape, and colour of the material organically informs and shapes the design and composition of the quilt, Reddy also strongly emphasizes how the Kavands are each woman quilter’s vehicle of her unique artistic grammar and language. “The aesthetics and imagery of the quilt she creates is entirely individual, abstracted from her mood and immediate surroundings along with a visual language which has evolved over generations. The women convey their inner landscape through wearable material the way a painter or sculptor does through their chosen mediums,” Anitha says. Anitha Reddy lives in Bengaluru and works with the Siddi’s around Karnataka.