Jayeeta Chatterjee: Weaving Feminine Histories & Resistance Through Art

In Jayeeta Chatterjee’s world, stories are not just told—they are carved, stitched, and layered into fabric and wood. They exist in the grain of the surface she works on, in the fibres of a well-worn sari, and in the repetitive motion of a needle pulling thread through cloth. Through woodcut printmaking and Nakshi Kantha embroidery, she builds a visual language that is deeply personal yet widely resonant, drawing from history, domesticity, and women's everyday struggles.

Her art refuses to conform to traditional hierarchies of “fine art” and “craft.” Instead, it reclaims labour-intensive, feminised mediums and transforms them into powerful sites of resistance and storytelling. Now, with the recognition that has come with the Asian Games Art Award, her work has a greater platform—but has anything changed?

“It’s a big thing, definitely,” she says. “Any kind of recognition really motivates me. It’s very important for a young artist to get this kind of recognition. But I don’t know—I feel the same way.” The answer is telling. For Chatterjee, while awards and recognition are affirming, they do not alter the deeper reasons why she creates.

The Weight of Tradition: Wood, Cloth, and Stories

For over 15 years, woodcut printmaking has been central to Chatterjee’s practice. The process of carving directly into the wood, the resistance it offers, the force needed to etch out an image—these physical demands connect her to the labour of creation in an almost meditative way.

“The texture of the wood, the surface—it’s really important for me to feel that,” she says. There is something primal in this interaction with the material, something that ties her to centuries of artists before her who have used wood as a medium for storytelling. Printmaking, historically used for mass communication, lends itself well to her themes—its repetitive nature mirroring the labour that defines domestic spaces, its bold contrasts echoing the stark realities of women’s lives.

Nakshi Kantha, on the other hand, entered her life more recently. “In a Bengali house, it’s very normal to see kathas and quilts, but I wasn’t really aware of the tradition in any deeper sense,” she says. Growing up, embroidered textiles were simply a part of the home, not an art form to be examined. That changed in 2019 when she began stitching with her mother, unknowingly stepping into a lineage of women who have passed down stories through thread for centuries.

“When I started reading about the history of Nakshi Kantha—how old the tradition is, almost 500 years—I became curious to learn it properly.”

Her curiosity led her beyond books. She travelled to villages, searching for women who still carried this knowledge. “It was difficult to learn the technique,” she admits. “There were so many obstacles. But I was stubborn. I had to learn it.” This persistence mirrors the resilience embedded in the tradition itself—Nakshi Kantha, after all, has survived generations of erasure and dismissal, much like the women who created it.

Memory as Material, Material as Memory

Chatterjee’s approach to material is deeply personal. She does not simply work with fabric—she collects it from the women whose stories she tells. Old saris, blouses, household cloths—each piece carries its own history, its own scent of memory.

“I started from my home, from my neighbours,” she says. “The materials are personal to them, and that makes them significant for me.”

Cotton holds particular significance. “Technically, I need something that absorbs ink, and cotton is best for that,” she explains. But her preference for cotton is not just practical—it is cultural. “In Bengal, most women wear cotton saris. It’s easy to find and easy to work with. But when I collect from women outside Bengal, the material changes—sometimes synthetic, sometimes silk. The material perspective shifts, but the subject, the women, remains the same. Their daily lives, their struggles—they are so similar.”

Here, the material becomes an archive of lived experience. The ink-stained cloth absorbs not just pigment but the weight of personal histories. The act of stitching, too, becomes a way of writing these histories onto fabric. For Chatterjee, memory is not abstract—it is tangible, embedded in every piece she creates.

Lakshmi: A Story That Refuses to Be Forgotten

Some stories, once heard, never leave you. For Chatterjee, one such story belongs to Lakshmi. A 22-year-old woman from Hyderabad, a mother of two, caught in the relentless cycle of domestic abuse. Chatterjee met her during a residency, sharing the same space, witnessing the bruises, the exhaustion, the quiet endurance.

“Her husband used to abuse her almost every day—physically, verbally,” she says.

For a long time, she could not bring herself to turn Lakshmi’s life into art. “I was too emotionally involved,” she admits. “I wasn’t ready to think of her as a subject. I saw her crying, hiding her bruises. One day, when her husband wasn’t home, she came to my studio. She wanted to talk.”

With the help of a fellow artist who translated between them, Lakshmi told her story. “From childhood to marriage—everything. It was overwhelming.”

It took time before Chatterjee could process it into a piece, but when she did, it became one of her most powerful works. “That moment—her story—it grounded me,” she says. “It reminded me of the privilege I have. I can’t complain about small things anymore. That I have a responsibility.”

This tension runs through her practice—the balance between witnessing and representing, between honouring a story and carrying its weight.

Art, Identity, and Influence

Chatterjee’s work is deeply rooted in the cultural and artistic traditions of Bengal, but it is also shaped by broader influences. Growing up in Santiniketan, she was surrounded by Rabindranath Tagore’s legacy and by an environment where art and life were intertwined.

“It definitely has a direct influence,” she acknowledges. “I was born and brought up in Santiniketan. In childhood, I read so many stories, visited places, and studied in Visva-Bharati. It’s part of me.”

Beyond Bengal, her travels have exposed her to other cultural narratives, broadening her perspective while reinforcing the universality of women’s experiences. Wherever I go, the material changes, the culture shifts, but the stories of women remain strikingly similar.”

The Responsibility of Remembering

For Chatterjee, art is not just about creation—it is about responsibility. The women who trust her with their stories, who hand over pieces of their lives in the form of fabric and memory, are not just subjects. They are collaborators and co-creators in a shared act of remembrance.

“Women’s daily lives—they’re political,” she states simply. “People don’t always see it that way, but they are.”

Her art does not just preserve memory—it demands that we remember. It does not just depict struggle—it urges us to see, to listen, to acknowledge. And as long as there are stories to be stitched, carved, and layered into the world, Jayeeta Chatterjee will continue to tell them.