MONIKA CORREA

THE PLEASURE OF WEAVING IS THE JOY OF SEEING FORM AND COLOUR GRADUALLY UNFOLD AND COME TO LIFE THROUGH THE MOVEMENT OF YOUR FINGERS - PARTLY THROUGH CHANCE, AND PARTLY THROUGH THE EXPRESSIVE QUALITIES INHERENT IN THE MATERIALS THEMSELVES. TO RECOGNIZE THAT WONDERFUL MOMENT- AND TO CATCH IT IN THE PLAY OF WARF AGAINST WEFT - IS THE ESSENCE OF THE ART - Monika Conca

- Mayank Mansingh Kaul

In Monika Correa's South Mumbai flat, a large eight-shaft teak loom occupies central space, on which, for almost six decades, she has woven extraordinary tapestries. In recent years, their acquisition by some of the most prestigious art museums around the world-from The Met and MoMA in New York to Tate in London-have firmly placed her work in an international league of artists, in a constellation of fibre makers who have triumphed in producing technical and aesthetic newness, despite the lack of recognition from the art market for a very long time. Equally, it belongs to an Indian universe that has moorings in enduring artistic themes, as well as some of the most significant design developments in the country's post-independence era.

One of her masterpieces, from 1985, is Killing Fields. It is handwoven with thick cotton and wool. The tapestry is almost three metres wide and another metre and a half in length, and occupies an entire expanse in the living room of this flat, from which two hand-tufted trees pop out in the middle of a meandering landscape of rice-growing terraces. Diagonally across, in the dining room, is another hand-painted landscape, commissioned by her late husband and renowned architect Charles, a trompe l'oeil-a large expanse of grass, with bushes in the horizon, as if being viewed from a window with reed blinds forming its frame. Past it, in the adjacent covered balcony, the sky outside is bright. Brass pots on a ledge shimmer against the sun.