During art week in Paris, the city brims with a general air of anticipation and excitement. Art enthusiasts arrive in town from around the world and galleries open new locations, masterful museum exhibitions and art fairs. Paris’s stunning architecture, urban landscape, and the Seine are the perfect backdrop. Amongst these were important moments of contrast: a focus on fabrics, craft and indigenous practices, which come together to consider themes of migration, globalisation and colonisation.

Upon entering Asia Now’s ninth edition (October 20-22) at the ornate ninth century Monnaie de Paris, the world’s longest running mint, textiles were amongst some of the first sights encountered. A yurt, a Central Asian tented dwelling structure, had been erected in the courtyard. Ikat tunics were mounted on passage walls and textile artworks were tacked on to pillars or hung suspended. Packed with visitors, the fair was active and intimate. Gallery booths were spread through the beautiful rooms of the mint beneath vaulted and moulded stucco-decorated ceilings, and in a temporary structure in the courtyard. In parts it resembled a rabbit warren of discovery. The 65 galleries from across Asia included heavyweight Perrotin (multiple locations), the Third Line and Ayyam Gallery from Dubai, Aspan Gallery and Pygmalion Gallery, both from Kazakhstan, and Iram Art from India.

Asia Now distinguishes itself through its geographic focus, annually selecting an Asian region to highlight. This year, Central Asia, a region integral to the ancient Silk Road and made up of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, was foregrounded. Slavs and Tatars, an artist collective focusing on “an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia”, were invited as guest curators. Their work includes knowledge generation and sharing, and this particular presentation titled Parcours brought together 14 artists engaging with textiles, reflecting on traditions, migration, feminism and the transfer of expertise. Their presentation included a Chaikhaneh (tea room), a reading room and an exhibition installed in six locations across the venue.

A colourful selection of ikat tunics by the Iranian, UAE-based fashion designer Nazzy Beglari were installed above the building’s central staircase, like bright kites hovering overhead. Ikat is not unique to Central Asia but it has become synonymous with Central Asian textile traditions. Ikat is a patterning and dyeing technique that is notoriously difficult, where the individual yarn and threads are dyed before being woven together. The weaving of Ikat is called “Abr-bandi” a Persian term which means “to tie the clouds”. The “cloud effect” describes the fading and blending of colours that requires great dexterity and skill of the weaver.

Contemporary artists have assimilated other elements of Central Asian weaving techniques and motifs into their practices. Gulnur Mukazhanova is a Berlin-based Kazakh artist whose felt panelled triptych in red, blue and yellow (resembling arched doorways, a customary textile image) was installed at the landing of the staircase. Artworks by Kubra Khademi, an Afghan feminist artist, were mounted on walls. Khademi’s art is bold and thought provoking, exploring female identity through her multidisciplinary practice and using embroidery and applique to portray imagery of women giving birth to animals.

For Slavs and Tatars, the poignance of woven methods and materials is twofold: in a world increasingly marginalised and secluded for many despite the hyperconnected nature of digital interactions, textiles and weaving represent the collective social fabric of modern life. The physical act of weaving, passed down via knowledge and skill transfer, brings together multitudes of delicate, individual threads to create fabric. Slavs and Tatars also liken the act of individual threads intertwining as a representation of the information age and representative of connectivity.

Concurrently at Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Manish Pushkale, a trained geologist and self-taught artist, opened his solo exhibition Carte Blanche: To Whom the Bird Should Speak? (until March 4, 2024). Looking to indigenous motifs and methods, the show features a large-scale tapestry-like work of hanging panels formed from handmade paper. A video piece and additional smaller works complete the exhibition and make reference to the story of the extinction of the Aka-Bo language, associated with the Bo Tribe in the Andaman Islands, India, and referred to as “the language of birds”.

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• Installation shot of To Whom the Bird should speak?, 2023, gouache, watercolour and mixed media on paper, Manish Pushkale| STIRworld

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Pushkale is interested in preserving knowledge and in his work combines motifs from India’s long history and contemporary culture. The installation of paper screens within the museum’s dimly lit Rotunda room is designed to create a journey of archaeological discovery; the work reveals its entirety as the viewer walks around within the folds of the sheets. Like narrow cave tunnels with visceral markings on the wall surfaces, the patterns on the paper reference the musical tonality of the Aka-Bo language and are amplified by the sound of birds that accompany the installation. Layered with rough criss-crossed lines, differently sized dots and smeared pigment, portions of the screens glitter from sand and rock fragments from the Andaman Islands. Pushkale’s gestural and textured work is an intensely sensorial experience.

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• Installation shot of To Whom the Bird should speak?, 2023, gouache, watercolour and mixed media on paper, Manish Pushkale| STIRworld

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Perhaps the most powerful of the fabric-based shows that opened recently is Paris-based Raphaël Barontini’s exhibition We Could Be Heroes (until February 11, 2024) on view at the impressive Panthéon. Responding to the space, famously the burial place of historic men including Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, Barontini has populated the building with his own “pantheon” of historic men and women. The show, live installed at the opening with a dramatic procession led by the music collective Mas Choukaj, hooked into traditions of pageantry. Large and vibrant screen printed banners of distinguished looking Black men and women, some in European dress and others in traditional attire, flanked by flags create a guard of honour to welcome visitors to the exhibition. The figures are the heroes from the abolitionist movement—men and women, some known and some obscure—including Sanité Bélair and Dutty Boukman from Haiti and Louis Delgrès from Martinique and Guadeloupe, who struggled against oppression and slavery, and fought for freedom.

Beyond the banners, monumental tapestries hang on either side of the centre of the Pantheon, suspended above each other, taking advantage of the height of the dome and in dialogue with the Pantheon’s existing masterful paintings. The tapestries depict elaborate narrative scenes of war. The Crossing (2023) features the image of a ship with visible arms rising out of the deck, grasping for help, and blue waters, sculpted statue heads and more, while The Battle of Vertières (2023) shows images of firing cannons, generals and rearing horses. Barontini’s art reimagines the present moment through a reconstruction of history and events. Each element in his artworks is selected with care, and he has used images from the collections of museums. He questions historically accepted portrayals of power and legacy, often scrutinising the position of art in museums, public spaces and historic buildings.

It is evident across the three presentations that there is a growing desire, and feelings of responsibility and pride, amongst artistic practitioners for the preservation and retelling of historical moments and indigenous practices. The tactility of the works – spanning craft, textiles, handmade paper, collages – produces an intimacy that makes their ideas around customs and heritage all the more potent. These are methods of passing on hard-learned wisdom for future generations.