Priya Ravish Mehra is a textile artist and weaver, researcher and designer based in Delhi. She is a textile consultant to several projects related to Handlooms and Handicrafts in India.She has also created ‘New Delhi Residency’, a space to facilitate partnerships and cultural exchange for artists visiting India working in various creative mediums and disciplines.
Currently, she has been working on a project’ Making invisible visible’ based on her research and documentation about ‘Rafoogars’ and their ‘Rafoogari’:The darning tradition in India.
This project has led to a three months arts residency in recent past in Scotland, with Cove Park and Deveron Arts, Huntly. Earlier, she has conducted several interactive workshops and presented her paper on the subject of Darning. She presented her paper “Rafoogari of Najibabad” at the 9th Biennial TSA Symposium 2004 in Oakland and “Rafoogari- an Invisible Craft” at NATCC, “North American Textiles Conservation Conference” in Mexico.2005.
She participated in “Common Goods” Project along with two Indian Rafoogars at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Australia to restore and recreate the Eureka flag during Commonwealth Games in 2006.Also organized ‘Rafoogar Baithaks’ at Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi in collaboration with INTACH in March 2009 and at ‘Raksha’ a Textile Conservation Conference, for ‘Sutra’ event in Kolkata in Feb 2010 and Murshidabad Heritage Festival in Dec 2011.
Priya is a Fine arts graduate (Textiles) of Visvabharti University, Santiniketan, West Bengal .She studied Tapestry weaving at the Royal College of Arts, London and the West Dean College, Sussex UK under the aegis of Commonwealth Fellowship and Charles Wallace Trust (India) Scholarship. Also recipient of the Asian Cultural Council Grant to study the maintenance and preservation of Indian Textiles, especially the Kashmir Shawls in Public and Private Collections in U.S.A.
She has worked as a research consultant in the states of Bihar and Gujarat for the “Saris of India Project”, sponsored by the Development Commissioner Handlooms, Ministry of Textiles.She is co-author of “Saris of India: Bihar and Bengal” published by Wiley and Eastern and AMR Vastra Kosh. Also research author for ‘Saris, Tradition and Beyond’ published by Roli Books.
She has participated in several group shows and solo shows in India and abroad.