Shradha Kochhar | Domestic Cadence of Unraveling

Each work is slow-made using kala cotton, an heirloom fiber spun on a peti charkha once owned by her father. As writer Anisa Jackson notes, “To make thread from raw cotton by hand is to slow down time. It is an act of resistance against disposability and speed, but also a means of mourning.”

Kochhar’s material choices are not symbolic but embodied. “The thread itself becomes a kind of journal,” Jackson writes, “at times violently twisted, uneven, tense; at others, smooth and flowing.” These gestures build what she calls “a living archive… where grief and invisible labor are made tangible.”

This exhibition marks Kochhar’s first solo presentation—a culmination of years of intimate making and a bold step in her growing dialogue with Aicon Contemporary. The gallery and artist share a commitment to platforming practices that are materially rigorous and historically grounded. Domestic Cadence of Unraveling positions Kochhar as a vital new voice in contemporary art—rooted in ancestral knowledge, diasporic memory, and feminist craft.

Shradha Kochhar (b. 1996, Delhi) is a textile artist whose hand-knitted sculptures explore the intersections of memory, labor, and South Asian heritage. Her work often features kala cotton, a strain native to India, and reflects an ongoing interest in material memory and intergenerational healing.

Kochhar earned her MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design, where she received the John L. Tishman Environment and Design Award. She was a finalist for the 2023 Van Lier Fellowship and the 2022 Dorothy Waxman Textile Excellence Prize. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Melbourne Museum and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and featured in Vogue, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, PAPER, and Crafts Magazine, among others.She is the founder and creative director of Imli Dana, a textile studio based between Brooklyn and New Delhi. 

Kochhar currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.