At LATITUDE 28, the exhibition ਸੂਤ ਤੇ ਸਾਹ — Sut te Saah: Stories Woven in Phulkari is an archival and emotional journey through Punjab’s living textile heritage. Presented by Bhavna Kakar and curated by Shreya Sharma, the exhibition brings together over 40 rare pre-Partition Phulkaris and Baghs. It is from the collections of designer Amit Hansraj and Brig. Surinder & Shyama Kakar. These textiles span the Majha, Doaba, and Malwa regions—each piece an intimate fragment of memory, devotion, and skill.
Curatorial Vision
Curator Shreya Sharma describes the exhibition as a “journey through the arc of human experience: birth, love, community, ritual, and remembrance.” Structured into three interlinked sections—Sankraman (Transition), Vishvaas ate Katha (Belief and Narrative), and Rihaish (Dwelling and Everyday Life)—Sut te Saah frames Phulkari as both spiritual and social text. “Phulkari carries the breath of its makers,” Sharma writes in her curatorial statement. “These textiles were never just decorative; they were a way for women to speak, to remember, to hope, to pray.”
The title of the exhibition derives from a Punjabi folk verse:
“Sut te saah ne rachan meri kahāṇī,
Phulkari de phullāñ vich likhi zindagānī.”
Thread and breath have woven my story; in the flowers of Phulkari, my life is written.
Phulkari, in this view, is not merely embroidery, it is memory made material, an archive of women’s inner worlds and their quiet acts of authorship. From the delicately stitched Chope—“the tenderness of beginnings, wrapped in blessings by the maternal grandmother”—to the radiant Vari-da-Bagh, made for weddings and community ceremonies, these textiles trace the emotional geography of women’s lives. Sainchi Phulkari captures the humour and valour of village life, while Thirma stands in contemplative white, “carrying the weight of silence associated with purity, reflection and transition.”
Central to the exhibition are oral histories and boliyan—songs sung by women during work, celebration, and ritual. “These songs serve as narrative threads that illuminate the social, emotional and symbolic life of Phulkari,” notes Sharma. The gallery becomes an immersive space where “sound, story and textile intersect,” allowing visitors to experience the living rhythm of tradition.
The Testimonies
For Bhavna Kakar, founder-director of LATITUDE 28, Sut te Saah is deeply personal. In her note, titled For My Mother, she recalls how “long before I understood Phulkari and Bagh as history or craft, they lived in my world as intimate presences.” She traces her own wedding ritual to a family Bagh carried through Partition—“I walked beneath my maternal Great-Grandmother’s Bagh… its weight was both protective and gentle.” Kakar reflects that “heritage is not owned; it is held, protected, and passed forward,” a sentiment embodied in every thread of these works.
Amit Hansraj’s contribution, too, carries a sense of inheritance. Remembering the women he grew up watching—“my grandmother and her friends spinning cotton yarn on a charkha and making dhurries in their spare time”—he recalls how “they could embroider with such precision, weaving hope and dreams in a piece of cloth.”
Through such personal, intergenerational testimonies, Sut te Saah bridges the domestic and the sacred, bringing forth stories “stitched into cloth rather than written into history.” In doing so, it transforms the gallery into a space of remembrance—an archive not of objects, but of breath and belonging.
all image Courtesy: Latitude 28
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
