COLLECTION
Ode to Freedom
One edition.
Never repeated.
Ode to Freedom is an ongoing collection of numbered textile editions, created through dialogue between inherited visual languages and living craft traditions.
THE INHERITANCE
The patterns came from my grandfather.
They had been kept in a drawer for decades.
When I began working with them, my first desire was simple: to make objects carrying his patterns and see them travel beyond the place where they began.
Through those objects, the patterns could reach places my grandfather never could.
“I wanted to make objects carrying his patterns and see them travel beyond the places where they began.
Through those objects, the patterns could reach places my grandfather never could.”
THE COLLABORATION
To bring the patterns to life, I travelled to Ajrakhpur, Gujarat, and met Sufiyan Ismail Khatri, a tenth-generation Ajrakh artisan.
Sufiyan comes from a family that has practiced the craft of Ajrakh hand-block printing across generations. His work has received international recognition through awards, exhibitions and workshops, including work presented at institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and through collaborations across Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Hawaii, the United States and beyond.
His practice is also about keeping the craft alive: sustaining a community of printers and dyers and ensuring that knowledge can continue into another generation.
Together, we began a dialogue between two visual languages.
Inherited
Visual language from Transylvania.
TRANSLATED
Through hand-block printing in India.
CREATED
As a limited textile edition in Transylvania.
EDITION 01
Dream Compass
First edition of Ode to freedom,
a limited series of hand-block printed textiles,
in two colorways.
Materials and process
Gujarati cotton
printed
Natural dyes
Limited edition
Irregularities are not defects.
They are evidence of the hand.
One pattern. One edition. One chapter at a time.
Each completed edition makes the next one possible.
A new inherited pattern. A new collaboration. A new place for it to travel.