India. The Fabric of Time

The exhibition India. The Fabric of Time at the Grand Palace of the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve is a major international project developed in collaboration with the National Crafts Museum & Hastkala Academy (New Delhi) and leading Russian museums. The exhibition features more than 300 textiles and costumes from museum collections, private collections, and fashion houses.

The textile exhibits trace the many threads that connect Indian weaving traditions with global fashion – for example, the links between Indian textiles, the iconic red-ground printed cottons of Ivanovo, Russia, and modern ready-to-wear. Across seven galleries, the exhibition explores the histories of cotton, silk, and wool, as well as embroidery, dyeing techniques, ornamental traditions, and, of course, the sari. The curators examine how Indian textiles have shaped global fashion and how traditional patterns, symbols, and visual codes have been reinterpreted in the mass culture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

“India has influenced our perception of the world, directly or indirectly, for centuries. This is why the exhibition brings together classical Indian miniature painting and formal portraits of 19th-century aristocratic women, Impressionist works, and traditional Indian men’s dress,” says Ekaterina Shinkareva, curator of the project and custodian of the Indian collection at the State Museum of Oriental Art.

“We often fail to realize how deeply Indian heritage has entered our everyday wardrobes and material culture as a whole,”
says Liudmila Aliabieva, curator of the exhibition, Academic Director of the Doctoral School of Arts and Design at HSE University, and Editor-in-Chief of Fashion Theory.
“In this exhibition, we deliberately create provocative juxtapositions, tracing Indian influences in the most unexpected contexts and constructing narratives that connect Indian textile traditions with Western European and Russian fashion in unexpected ways.”

Program

The exhibition is accompanied by a rich public program featuring more than thirty events with Russian designers, fashion professionals, and researchers in fashion and textile studies. The program includes guided exhibition walks for the museum’s youngest visitors (ages 3+) and family art workshops. As part of the Fashion Laboratory developed for the exhibition, teenagers are invited to immerse themselves in the design process and create their own clothing collections. Adult audiences can join curator-led tours, lectures, and discussions exploring the exhibition’s central themes, as well as hands-on workshops in natural dyeing, weaving, and textile printing. Visitors can also create an India-inspired fragrance and learn how to drape a sari.

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