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   Fig 1. Marcel Duchamp, Box in Valise, (1935-41)  In 1822, An Englishwoman named Fanny Parkes followed her husband  Charles Crawford Parkes to India. Charles, an employee of the East India Company was stationed as a collector of customs at Allahabad. While he was occupied with work, Fanny busied her days by learning Hindi, horse riding and occasionally mingling with Indian women in the Zenana. Just as she was beginning to settle down, her husband was posted to Kanpur (‘Cawnpore’ in those days) which was a rather dull environment compared to what she was used to. So she took to travelling on her own and exploring India. Everywhere  she went, she documented her travels that later were published into a...

                          Figure1: B.Wurts-Untitled.1889    We begin our mornings   removing blankets,  folding sheets,  putting a bed cover,   straightening pillows,  drawing curtains,  wiping  our faces,   changing into a new set of pajamas  and placing a cushion underneath the  laptop to begin our work from home.  As we spend more time at home these days,mixing our worlds of  work and leisure, the spaces around us have morphed into one another; leaving textile  to demarcate rooms and differentiate between night and day.   Within the setting of a home, textiles range from extravagant display worthy carpets to  run down floor mats that say ‘welcome’.  At every space in the house, we encounter these negotiations...

        Figure 1 -Adobe structure at Azraq Camp, Jordan. In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, he describes the city of Trude in the chapter on continuous cities. The city’s distinctive character is its undistinguishable nature. The sameness of it is carried out in the landscape of the city; the flowers, street signs and houses. When the chance to leave approached, the people of Trude said, “you can resume your flight whenever you like...but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail...only the name of the airport changes.”   For nomadic communities, they carry the city of Trude with them rather than arriving at it. Though temporary, the tent features a sense of continuity. It goes wherever...

    Figure 1: Podaegi- Korean Sling.  For many women, the option of leaving their babies at home to be taken care of does not exist. To make ends meet she must step out to work and carry her baby along with her. Strapped to her back, the baby sling gives her hands and body enough space to do her work and at the same time to tend to her child every once in a while.   The cloth used to strap babies onto the parent is considered sacred in many cultures found in Indonesia, China, Peru and India among other countries.  The size, material, colour, motifs wish the baby a prosperous life and act as a protective charm as...

Figure1: Dayanita Singh, Museum of Chance.    The presence of a story can be felt in the silence of the room. Who used to live here? Do they still live here? The objects- the bed, drawers, tiles, curtain, window seem to have seen it all. What did they see that we didn’t see? The feeling of home is hard to define. It varies and adapts but there’s something constant enough about it that allows it to be used as a phrase. Home, like the heart, is centred and whole.  It sustains itself and life in turn, through its looped structure. The loops, Tim Ingold explains, are like knots or a chorus that come together to sing a melody. The invisible connections...