Spaces That Hold: The Liminal Worlds of Swapnaa Tamhane

Sorting the world into binaries – black or white, masculine or feminine, East or West – has long been a way to make sense of complexity. Yet the most compelling stories seldom sit at these extremes. They live in the in-between: fluid, layered, and rich with contradiction. It is here that Canadian-born artist, curator, and writer Swapnaa Tamhane works, honouring the liminal while challenging hierarchies inherited from colonial histories and questioning the rigid divisions between art and craft. Her practice is rooted in both research and materiality, led by a belief that surfaces carry memory.

Swapnaa Tamhane. Detail of Mobile Palace, 2020-2021. Block print on mill-made cotton, beading, appliqué. Made with Salemamad Khatri and Mukesh Prajapati. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Dennis Ha.

Tamhane’s first solo exhibition in the United States, Spaces That Hold, is now open at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College until 4 January 2026, curated by Dr. Siddhartha Shah. The title, Shah notes, is “like the start of many sentences,” suggesting an open invitation to thought and participation. The exhibition spans three galleries and a 17th-century heritage room, offering a sensory experience that is both contemplative and tactile, encouraging viewers to slow down and look closely.

Salemamad Khatri, Abdulaziz Khatri, and Suleiman Khatri. Ajrakhpur, Kutch, 2020. Image courtesy of Swapnaa Tamhane.

Tamhane troubles the assumption that tradition belongs to the past and modernity to the present. Working over many years with artisans in Kutch, Gujarat—notably block printer Salemamad Khatri and woodblock carver Mukesh Prajapati—she engages in slow, deliberate acts of making that refuse to separate art from craft. In Mobile Palace (2019–2021), mill-made cotton is transformed through appliqué, natural dyes and meticulous embellishment into a form of soft architecture. Suspended in space, the installation evokes nomadic dwellings, temples and ceremonial pavilions, while honouring Ajrakh block-printing traditions. Each layer has been mordanted, resisted, printed and dyed by hand—a quiet yet radical insistence that labour, skill and lineage remain visible.

Tent: A Space for the Ceremony of Close Readings, 2018. Made in collaboration with Mukesh Bhai Prajapati and Salemamad Khatri. Image courtesy of Swapnaa Tamhane.

The companion work, Tent: A Space for the Ceremony of Close Readings (2018), reimagines Le Corbusier’s concrete architecture in India as a textile environment. Again collaborating with Prajapati and Khatri, Tamhane translates architectural façades into repeating block-print designs, building a tent-like structure inspired by South Asian shamianas and Ottoman military tents. Inside hangs a handmade khadi paper lantern, its geometric cut-outs glowing like an offering—restoring human presence to a modernist narrative that often erased the handmade. 

Swapnaa Tamhane. Detail of Mobile Palace, 2020-2021. Block print on mill-made cotton, beading, appliqué. Made with Salemamad Khatri and Mukesh Prajapati. Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Dennis Ha.

For Tamhane, they do—when making is rooted in accountability, collaboration and cultural continuity. Co-author of SĀR: The Essence of Indian Design (Phaidon, 2016) and recently shortlisted for the 2025 Sobey Art Award, she is reshaping contemporary textile practice: intellectually rigorous, politically alert, and deeply human.

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Further Information:

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Image Credits:

Lead: Mobile Palace, 2019-2021. Mill-made cotton, appliqué, beading, natural dyes. Made with Salemamad Khatri, Mukesh Prajapati
Installation "Swapnaa Tamhane: Mobile Palace", curated by Dr. Deepali Dewan, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 2022. Photo by Paul Eekhoff/ROM

All further images as credited in photo captions.