I’m Cocooning

3 April 2022 /

Whilst the majority of cotton is grown in countries that are already under water shortages and contamination crises, growing cotton additionally requires heavy use of pesticides, fertilisers, and GMO chemicals that add up to the water pollution leading to serious health hazards to both humans and animals. This is a critical argument for the central role of craft makers in the transition to regenerative textiles.

‘Of memory and matter’ by Shradha Kochhar explores the revival of ‘Khadi’ – a self-reliant and equitable practice of textile making and ‘Kala Cotton’, a miracle cotton crop that sustains completely on seasonal rainfall as solutions to climate change, water shortage, soil degradation and social inequity.

This fiber is hand-spun on a portable spinning wheel (Gandhi charkha) into yarn. The yarn then is hand knit into textures and structures that mimic the skin on our bodies offering proof of concept towards systematic change in textile production and cotton farming.