As the fall festival season approaches in Queens, artist Sunaina Bhalla invites participants to gather around the saree as a site of memory, politics, and inheritance. Taking place during South Asian festival season, the event makes space to consider how textiles carry memory across generations of diasporic communities. What happens when we come together to reflect on the political and familial legacy behind such adornments?

In The Saree Project, Bhalla examines the saree not only as an emblem of beauty and tradition, but as a cultural text shaped by histories of gender, power, restriction, and control. Drawing from a personal archive of sarees inherited from her mother and mother-in-law, Bhalla considers how sartorial codes, ideas of modesty and ownership, colonial encounters, and changing forms of surface design and tailoring have shaped the garment and bodies that wear it.

The Artist Talk + Textile Lab combines a brief artist talk with a conversation on collective textile sharing, and hands-on making. Participants will work with the saree, adding their mark to an evolving component of The Saree Project; and experiment with block printing, with fabrics provided by Bhalla. Participants are also invited to bring an ancestral textile, memory, or story associated with the politics of garments.

Please note: Participants are invited to bring textiles to work with for block printing. Block printing technique works best on natural, absorbent fabrics such as cotton and linen. Fabrics for the printing activity will also be provided by Bhalla.

Schedule
2:00–2:30 PM — Slow start & refreshments
2:30–3:00 PM — Artist talk: The Saree Project
3:00 - 3:30 PM — Discussion & collective textile sharing
3:30 - 4:50 PM — Working with saree & block printing
4:50–5:00 PM — Closing

About the Artist

Sunaina Bhalla is a contemporary artist of Indian origin based in Singapore. Trained as a textile designer in India, she later studied the traditional Japanese art of Nihonga under Suiko Ohta-sensei in Tokyo, before completing her MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London and LASALLE College of the Arts.

Her practice explores ritual, repetition, and the body's relationship to pain and healing—often using industrial materials, textiles, and embroidery to reflect fragility and transformation over time. Currently, she is researching traditional healing practices in Southeast Asia and their use in chronic conditions like diabetes and breast cancer.

She has exhibited internationally in Japan, India, Singapore, Europe, and the Middle East. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the ESSL Museum in Vienna, Mumbai Airports Authority, and private collectors worldwide.