The interweave of culture, tradition, identity and place

Using thread, textiles, embroidery, paper, banana fibre and other everyday materials, Sumakshi Singh creates immersive, life-sized installations inspired by architectural spaces and ancient monuments. Her work draws on the intimate thresholds of human experience as it explores a longing for stability and permanence within a world shaped by transience. Sumakshi’s installations invite visitors to move through labyrinths of fragmented architectural forms, where hard surfaces are transformed into ethereal skins of thread and lace that hover between absence and presence. Often created in collaboration with artisans and craftspeople, the works combine hand-stitching and repetitive processes to bring domestic craft into the realm of contemporary art.

Saanjh, a piece chosen for Homo Faber 2026, emerges from a year-long dialogue between Sumakshi and master sanjhi artist Mohan Kumar Verma. The work renders the silhouettes of monumental pillars in banana fibre paper, using sanjhi, a sacred paper-cutting tradition practised since the 16th century in Mathura and Vrindavan. Each pillar begins as a drawing built from Sumakshi’s threaded and embroidered lines, which is then scanned, stencilled and finally cut by hand with fine custom scissors by Mohan Kumar Verma. In the work, ornament and architecture dissolve into filigree, leaving a fragile trace of grandeur.