Dhairya Garg

In the arid deserts of Kutch, Gujarat lie small communities like Rabaari and Ahir who embroider as a way of self-reliance as well as occupation. In order to perceive them a trip was planned to Kutch and to conceptualize our experience an illustration was made.

An experience map of the trip to Santalpur in Kutch has tried to depict the changes and transformations happening in the livelihood of people as the commercialization of the craft started. On the trip it was noticed that as one went on from one village to another i.e from Pargaon to Radhanpur, there was a certain level of development in terms of education and the urban ways of living and the space surrounded as well as an increase in the number of artisans dependent on the craft for their livelihood. This had brought numerous other social changes in the village in terms of their thinking of letting a woman earn her livelihood as well as giving her the freedom of traveling alone and gaining her own identity. Therefore, the map starts from the center where the woman is involved in the household work like cooking and animal husbandry and goes on to her realizing the importance of her skill in the outer world and making it on her own and ends with an iconic memory of one of the artisans Gauri ben showcasing her work to Hillary Clinton in America to show the woman reaching to who she is today and getting the exposure of the outer world. There are small illustrations of the space used by them to depict the dependance between an artisan and their workspace. Furthermore, the whole map has been made in the form of a spiral to highlight the idea of transformation visually.

CEPT University

CEPT University, formerly the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, is an academic institution located near university area in Ahmedabad, India offering undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in areas of natural and developed environment of human society and related disciplines.

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Understanding Super-Fandom Communities in a Postcolonial Context

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Nandini Kataria