Fields of Chamba

Fields of Chamba emerges as a meditation on land, labour, and the intimate act of making. Rooted in the verdant valleys of Chamba, where terraced fields contour the mountains and seasons script their quiet rhythms, the collection draws from a landscape that is both cultivated and lived. These fields are not passive expanses; they are sites of care, repetition, and interdependence, where human touch meets the vitality of nature.

Translating this sensibility into textile, the rumal becomes a field in itself. The square expanse of cloth is not merely a surface but a ground—held, stretched, and worked upon—where the embroiderer’s body engages in a tactile dialogue. Each stitch is an act of sowing, each motif an emergence. The needle moves like a gesture across terrain, tracing flora, fauna, and narrative forms that echo the ecological and cultural life of Chamba.

Traditionally, the Chamba Rumal has carried mythological and courtly imagery. Here, these visual languages are gently reoriented toward the everyday poetics of the region. Grasses, blossoms, animals, and fleeting gestures of rural life enter the frame not as decoration but as memory and  presence. The field, then, is both literal and metaphorical—a cultivated land, a textile ground, and a space of embodied knowledge.

In Fields of Chamba, embroidery becomes an act of inhabiting. The cloth holds time, labour, and attention, much like the land itself. Through this collection, Practices Beyond, Chamba Rumal extends the tradition into a contemporary vocabulary that honours its precision and discipline while opening it to new materialities, sensibilities, and ways of seeing

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