From Dior to the Vatican: Chanakya School of Craft’s Karishma Swali on reviving Indian craftsmanship on the global stage

Q. The Swali Craft Prize celebrates artists and artisans reshaping accepted techniques into modern expressions. How bash you spot this reinvention playing a relation successful taking accepted Indian arts and crafts forward?

Karishma Swali: The Swali Craft Prize is India’s archetypal assistance dedicated to modern trade innovation. It marks a transformative infinitesimal successful the country’s interdisciplinary creator landscape, reinforcing the relation of handcraft arsenic some a surviving archive and an evolving communicative form.

Founded by the Chanakya Foundation successful collaboration with the India Art Fair, the prize honours exceptional craftsmanship that bridges practice with modern expression. I genuinely judge that the satellite is undergoing an artisanal renaissance, and the quality to correspond Indian artistry connected the planetary signifier is simply a profound accidental to honour and stock the extent of our taste legacy.

Q. Your presumption astatine the fair––”Towards Light”–– explores the intersection of textiles, hand-embroidery, and chromatic carving arsenic tactile forms of expression. Tell america much astir it?

Karishma Swali: “Towards Light” is an creator dialog betwixt humanity and nature, explored done indigenous craftsmanship. The grounds blurs the lines betwixt existent and metaphysical realms, showcasing a fantastical beingness of handwoven textiles, intricate embroidery, and chromatic carvings.

The installation features textile abstractions woven connected a custom-built Saori loom, mirroring organic, flowing forms. Sculptural pieces incorporated woven integrated fabric threads connected bamboo structures, juxtaposed with hand-carved achromatic chromatic figures with elongated limbs stretching toward light—a awesome of growth, unity, and transformation. The works employment accepted embroidery techniques similar couching, bullion knots, crochet, and good stitching, creating layered narratives of sisterhood, taste memory, and biology harmony.

Towards Light grounds (Source: Chanakya School of Craft)

Q. You started visiting the Chanakya atelier astatine the property of 11. What are your earliest memories?

Karishma Swali: I person ever had a heavy appreciation for handcraftsmanship, shaped by my puerility experiences. My father, who founded Chanakya successful the aboriginal 1980s, had a imaginativeness to stock India’s finest craftsmanship with the world. I retrieve visiting artisans’ workshops, mesmerised by their quiescent absorption and deliberate movements—a subject that reminded maine of riyaz, a rigorous and meditative signifier of perfecting an creation form.

Chanakya brought unneurotic 13th and 14th-generation maestro artisans, creating a trade corporate successful Mumbai that honoured contented portion embracing innovation. Today, I consciousness privileged to proceed this bequest of creator excellence.

Q. It has been implicit 20 years since Maria Grazia Chiuri (then astatine Fendi) and the Chanakya household began moving together. Can you speech astir this journey?

Karishma Swali: I met Maria Grazia Chiuri archetypal astir 26 years ago, and from our precise archetypal conversation, we connected implicit a shared passionateness for craftsmanship. She has ever championed culture, craft, community, equality, and justice, which has profoundly shaped my originative vision.

Our collaboration has been an ongoing exploration of preserving artisanal legacies portion amplifying planetary trade communities. Together, we person worked to make spaces for women artisans to explicit themselves freely and creatively. The Chanakya School of Craft has been instrumental successful this journey, empowering postgraduate women artisans to beryllium portion of these planetary creator dialogues.

This twelvemonth marked a milestone—Enroute, a year-long accumulation astatine the Vatican Apostolic Library, conceptualised by Maria Grazia and me. Brought to beingness by Chanakya’s maestro artisans and women graduates, the accumulation reflects India’s trade practice portion fostering an interdisciplinary creator exchange.

Karishma Swali, Jasmine Wahi and Jaya Asokan (Source: Chanakya School of Craft)

Q. Will we spot much creator collaborations, similar your enactment with Madhvi and Manu Parekh?

Karishma Swali: Absolutely. We are perpetually expanding our collaborations with artists, manner houses, and non-profits to observe artisanal legacies. Most recently, we worked with Rithika Merchant connected the Dior Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2025-26 scenography was a testament to interdisciplinary artistry.

Our ongoing creator signifier led to Enroute, an ambitious task that explores interconnected histories, taste memory, and the transmission of cognition done handcraftsmanship and storytelling.

Q. “Cosmic Garden” received important attraction astatine the Venice Biennale. Could you stock that acquisition and archer america astir upcoming exhibitions?

Karishma Swali: India’s beingness astatine the Biennale has been constricted truthful far, and we are arrogant to observe our creator collaboration with Manu and Madhvi Parekh. Through “Cosmic Garden,” our endeavour was threefold – to blur assumed hierarchies wrong good creation by introducing a caller connection done an interdisciplinary corporate approach, to recognise the value of highlighting communities successful representing their worldly culture, and to contiguous an aligned imaginativeness for preserving India’s taste practice and artisanal legacies.