Sreeraghavi Mani
Designer, Textile Artist
I am a Textile Designer and illustrator from New Delhi, India and currently pursuing Master of Fine Arts, Textiles, from Parsons School of Design in New York, USA. I hail from Delhi having a good exposure to multi- ethnic cultures of India, as I belong to a deep rooted South Indian family based in Tamil Nadu, with ancestral roots in Andhra Pradesh. I grew up in a very diverse set up, where I celebrated festivals of the North and the South, know the languages Hindi, Tamil and Telugu and manage to understand a few more languages of India, one of the most diverse countries in the world.
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This gave me a chance to observe, learn and appreciate the differences in region, religion, language, traditions, rituals, cultural practices, beliefs, clothing, music art and so much more! This also translates to the diversity in textiles, evolution of certain craft practices and traditional techniques of fabric making, function and ornamentation. I did my undergrad in Textile Design from National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh - the heart of India. My upbringing allowed me to adapt and blend in with different places, people, languages and cultural practices easily, also making me more open to the many types of textile practices that the country has to offer!
Textile is ubiquitous - it is in clothes, cars, homes, shoes, bags, acoustics, medical products and now even electric circuits. Now is an especially exciting time as innovations in textile design and engineering are changing the very definition of the word. Within this context of massive development in the field, the juxtaposition of traditional and the modern, whether in method, design elements and application has always been, and continues to be fascinating to me. I believe that a good design is 'most advanced, yet acceptable', and when it comes to art, it the element of surprise, or the mystery reveal that defines the experience I'm creating for the audience.