YUKTI V. AGARWAL
(b. 2000)
36 x 48”
Manual machine knit, Loro Piana cashmeres
Project funded by RISD Research
Kashmir was once whole. Then it was broken. Now it is being pieced back together—though perhaps it never can be.
The work begins with a stock image of the Kashmir Valley, translated into Jacquard knit through countless punch cards for a fragment of cloth. The yarn: pashm from Leh, spun and branded in Italy by Loro Piana. Then came erasure. Wool, once washed, collapses—losing form, losing integrity. The fabric disfigured.
Reconstruction followed. Darning stitches—some hidden, some deliberately exposed—bind the fragments into uneasy unity. The textile bears its wounds. It is broken down only to be rebuilt, a mirror of Kashmir itself.