Marking forty years of Chanakya and a decade of its School of Craft, Creative Director Karishma Swali celebrates the Mumbai-born embroidery house with three citywide exhibitions that trace its evolution across art, couture and education. She reflects on sustaining quiet excellence while collaborating with over fifty global fashion houses, and on building a future where Indian craft traditions remain living, experimental and globally relevant.
Chanakya, the Mumbai-founded textile and embroidery house established in 1986 by Vinod Shah, marked two milestones this September: forty years since its founding, and ten years of the Chanakya Foundation and School of Craft. Karishma Swali, who has led the house as Creative Director since the early 2000s and built its relationships with more than fifty international fashion houses, chose to mark the occasion not with a single retrospective but with three simultaneous exhibitions across the city where it all began.
En Route, presented at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum from 8 September, brought a body of work first shown at the Vatican Apostolic Library into dialogue with the museum's own rare map collection. Garden of Gestures, staged at the Chanakya ateliers from 9 September, opened the doors of the atelier itself, tracing a gesture from first learning to instinct. Belong, at Experimenter—Colaba from 10 September, marked the Chanakya School's first solo exhibition in Mumbai. Robb Report India spoke with Swali about the four decades behind the moment, and the ones she has planned next.
Karishma Swali (KS): For four decades, Chanakya has been dedicated to highlighting the pluralistic beauty and diversity of India's finest crafts, and to the perpetuation of savoir-faire at the intersection of art, craft and couture.
Our enduring relationships with more than 50 international fashion houses have grown from this foundation and from a shared commitment to exceptional quality, savoir-faire and uncompromising values. We have never felt the need to separate visibility from purpose; our focus has always remained on the medium and the work, researching traditional gestures and advancing them through material inquiry. Each collaboration becomes a distinct creative dialogue, grounded in deep respect for material, technique and the extraordinary knowledge of our master artisans. It is this continuity of purpose that has allowed Chanakya to evolve while remaining at the forefront of craft excellence.
KS: It is difficult to separate one from the other because, together, the three exhibitions reflect the breadth of Chanakya's journey across artistic practice, education, research and cultural exchange. En Route considers how knowledge travels and how each generation finds new ways of taking it forward; Garden of Gestures opens the doors of our ateliers and traces the life of a gesture, from the first act of learning to the moment when making becomes inseparable from the maker; and Belong reflects on what we carry with us through material, memory and inherited systems of knowledge.
Bringing these three exhibitions to Mumbai felt particularly meaningful because this is where Chanakya began, and where so many of the relationships, practices and ideas that have shaped the last four decades continue to live. To mark forty years here was therefore less about looking back and more about bringing the different strands of our practice together, while creating space for what comes next.
KS: As the first cohort of women graduated from the Chanakya School, a deeper purpose took root: to dismantle historical hierarchies that have long separated fine art from craft, and to explore a contemporary visual language where both exist as equals. This ambition gave rise to Chanakya School's artistic practice, an autonomous artist collective dedicated to research, material inquiry and creative experimentation.
Our collaborations with Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Manu and Madhvi Parekh, Isabella Ducrot, Mickalene Thomas, Olesia Trofymenko and others have brought different forms of knowledge and ways of making into conversation. This dialogue also extends into our pedagogy. Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, for instance, is part of the School's curriculum, allowing students to engage with the histories and ideas that inform the practices of those with whom we collaborate.
The collective's works and collaborations have since been presented internationally, from Cosmic Garden at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and En Route at the Vatican Apostolic Library, to the Mobilier National in Paris, India Art Fair, Art Basel and Frieze.
KS: What feels most unfinished is also what feels most exciting: building an ecosystem where the boundaries of creative expression are continually reconsidered and dismantled to reveal the new. We will continue to invest in education, artistic research and international cultural dialogue, while expanding access to craft for generations to come.
Over the next decade, the Chanakya School aims to extend its education to more than 14,000 women. The Swali Craft Prize, established in 2025, creates a platform for interdisciplinary practice, research and new commissions. Our artistic programme continues to expand, with Cosmic Garden, first presented at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024, travelling to the Bihar Museum and, subsequently, with a proposed presentation at the Denver Art Museum in 2028.
Alongside this, CHANAKYA: A Continuum, published by Skira Editore, brings together four decades of archival material, photography and essays, while Chorus carries this continuum into a contemporary fashion practice informed by the textile traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Across each of these, the intention remains the same: to ensure that these knowledge systems continue to live, evolve and find new forms of expression.
KS: My father continues to inspire me every day. As a child, I was deeply influenced by his kindness, his generosity and, above all, by the fact that he has always been a seeker. He is constantly questioning, learning and looking more deeply, with a genuine sense of wonder.
That spirit of seeking continues to guide how I choose the people we collaborate with. I am drawn to practitioners who bring curiosity and openness to their work, who are interested in exchange, and who see material and making as spaces for discovery. From my father, I learnt that the pursuit of excellence can be rigorous while still being joyful, and that the most meaningful collaborations begin with a shared desire to learn, question and create something new together.
KS: In Mumbai, En Route entered into dialogue with the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum's extensive rare map collection. For this iteration, we created several new interdisciplinary works, including two cartographic works tracing Mumbai's evolution from Heptanesia, a cluster of seven islands, through reclamation, trade, the cotton mills and the Art Deco seafront.
The Museum itself became an important part of this dialogue, as an institution through which Mumbai's industrial, artistic and civic life has been documented, preserved and renewed. From the Vatican Apostolic Library to Mumbai, En Route considers how knowledge travels, how it is preserved, and how each generation finds new ways of taking it forward.
KS: The two timelines are part of the same continuum, each informing and expanding the possibilities of the other. Chanakya's four decades of material research and savoir-faire created the foundation from which the School emerged, while the School has opened new possibilities across education, artistic research and creative experimentation.
Over the next decade, we aim to extend the School's education to more women, while continuing to advance our artistic practice and international cultural dialogue. At the heart of both is a commitment to transmission: ensuring that these knowledge systems remain living and limitless, and creating the conditions for a new generation of practitioners to question them, expand them and take them in directions we cannot yet imagine.
KS: The needle remains the same, but the dialogue around it is constantly evolving. As a practitioner, my own process begins with material, gesture and technique, working closely with our master artisans to understand how a traditional language can respond to a new creative context. There is a constant exchange between what we have inherited, what the material reveals and what we are trying to express.
Whether a work is presented at a museum or on a runway, the approach is rooted in the same rigour of practice: researching the gesture, exploring material possibilities and allowing technique to find its most expressive form. That continuous inquiry is what allows savoir-faire to remain a living, limitless language.