Uthra Rajgopal is a Curator with expertise in South Asian textiles, holding former curatorial positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and The Whitworth in Manchester. In 2019, Uthra won the prestigious UK Art Fund New Collecting Award to build a collection of contemporary textile artworks for the Whitworth, specifically artworks made by women artists working in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and the UK diaspora. She has curated a number of international exhibitions and commissions including Beyond Borders; A Tailor is Sewing the Dress for Tipu Sultan performance by Yasmin Jahan Nupur; Rehang at Bikaner House, Delhi; Cotton: labour, land and body for the Crafts Council; Fragments of Our Time for the British Textile Biennial 2023. Uthra has worked with handloom weavers and dyers and textile collections in Tamil Nadu and in Kutch, Gujarat and is a guest lecturer at a number of universities, and regularly mentors artists working with textiles. Most recently Uthra presented her research on Madras Checks (forthcoming publication in the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Textiles Vol IV Color) at the V&A Connecting Threads Symposium and at the Indian Ocean Crafts Triennial conference in Perth, Australia. She is a keen advocate of championing and expanding the field of textile arts and building networks across and between South Asia and the wider communities. Uthra is currently a Vice Chancellor Scholarship PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University and holds a MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and BA (Hons) University of York.
The concept of establishing a museum in a remote region of India—one that is not only geographically isolated but also prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and cyclones—presents a complex set of challenges. Yet, it also offers a rare opportunity to engage deeply with the traditional knowledge systems of local communities. Located in Ajrakhpur,…
