swati kalsi, a Textile and Clothing Designer, has worked with handcrafted textiles in various capacities, for more than a decade. Over the years she has been noted to have brought contemporary relevance to the time honored handcrafted textiles of artisans, thereby pushing to create a basis for their livelihoods.
She engages with artisans in interactive creative processes to enhance the artist in them, creating pieces of work that have been seen on the cusp of design, craft and art. Over intriguing give and take and inconceivable twists and turns, emerges a unique design vocabulary that connotes timelessness, highlighting the quirks and anomalies that arise out of the process of creating.
Swati was a part of a World Bank program with Shri Rajeev Sethi, through which she started working closely with traditionally skilled artisans, to position Indian women's embroidery traditions as an innovative and a uniquely artistic cultural legacy. Born in Delhi, Swati graduated from NIFT, Delhi in 2002 with awards for 'Best use of textiles in fashion' and 'Best overall performance'.
She has been warmly noted by fashion, design, art magazines and thinkers alike. Her work has been a part of Design, Textile and Fashion exhibitions/shows at galleries and museums like Alliance Francaise de Delhi, Devi Art Foundation, India, and Victoria & Albert Museum , London. It has also made space for itself in the homes and wardrobes of eminent national and international artists, collectors and connoisseurs.