Sudeshna Saxena

Royal College of Art

Tracing the Source: The Saree in My Life

Sudeshna Saxena is a textile designer, researcher, and illustrator from India. With a background in designing traditional handcrafted textiles, they view these fabrics as repositories of stories. These stories are layered and form a significant part of India's cultural material memory. As a visual storyteller, their goal is to narrate these textile tales, rich with myriad meanings and cultural associations, to highlight their role in shaping everyday identities.

Their work is characterised by its textured, intricate, and rustic quality, a reflection of my career in textile design. This distinctive style enhances the storytelling in their work by subtly hinting at the source of its inspiration.