Shradha Kochhar

The work is made from hand spinning ‘Kala cotton’ - a cotton crop indigenous to India on a portable booklet spinning wheel (charkha) and hand knitting it into textures and structures that mimic the skin on our bodies. Focusing and investigating resources lost and born out of colonization in India such as ‘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.

Shradha Kochhar (b. Delhi, India) is a textile artist and knitwear designer based in New York. Best known for her home spun and hand knitted ‘khadi’ sculptures using ‘kala cotton’ - an inherently organic cotton strain indigenous to India, her work is at an intersection of material memory, sustainability and intergenerational healing. Focusing on generating a physical archive of personal and collective south asian narratives linked to women’s work, invisible labor and grief, the work is large scale and will exist beyond whispers over generations.