Mumbai’s newest experimental art platform, Six Continuum, will open its inaugural exhibition There Are No Punch Cards on April 18, 2026, featuring new jacquard works by Silvassa-based studio Mechaniya, co-founded by Tanvi Ranjan and Namrata Kothari. Running until May 18 at Eon One, Prabhadevi, the exhibition foregrounds the studio’s ongoing engagement with industrial textile processes, digital technologies, and feminist approaches to labour and authorship.
Working within a knitwear factory in Silvassa, Mechaniya positions machines not merely as tools but as collaborators in the creative process. The exhibition includes works from their series The Buffering Baag, which draws from historical textile traditions such as chintz and palampore. Using a six-colour palette, motifs are digitised into pixels and translated into stitch patterns, resulting in hybrid surfaces that merge digital precision with the irregularities of hand-making. The practice reflects a broader inquiry into how craft histories can be reimagined amid rapid industrialisation.
Central to Mechaniya’s methodology is its work with women from local communities, who are trained in jacquard design software alongside traditional textile techniques. By enabling participants to move from labour intensive tasks to creative authorship, the studio challenges entrenched gendered divisions within factory systems. This approach aligns with the exhibition’s broader proposition: to rethink the relationships between technology, labour, and artistic agency.
There Are No Punch Cards also marks the launch of Six Continuum as a new interdisciplinary platform supporting experimentation across art, design, craft, and sound. Conceived as both a physical and conceptual space, it aims to foster dialogue through exhibitions, residencies, and public programming. The exhibition, supported by Cultivate Art is curated by Abhinit Khanna, with architecture by Nibedita Mishra and interiors by The House of Mahendra Doshi.
Cover image: Baag is Buffering, 6 computerized-knitted jacquard in organic cotton and bamboo yarn. | 28.75” x 26,” 202 | Image credits: Mechaniya and Six Continuum.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
