Excerpt from CG+, reported by Divya Fernandez on 15th Aug 2009: Read Full Article
A Milan-based cartoonist wanted to set her cartoons free from books; she got the opportunity to do it through a development project in Mumbai.
“I had the idea of embroidering my cartoons on cloth several years ago as I was interested in the interconnection between art and handicrafts. Today I could realise the idea thanks to a development project in Baiganwadi, a Mumbai slum area,” says Pat Carra, a well known artist from Milan, who has been creating strips about women and other society-related issues for more than 20 years.
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Snow White: Tell the handsome prince that before he wakes me up, he should make the 7 beds, iron the 7 sheets and wash the 14 socks (translation of Pat Carra’s cartoon) |
Punto-a-Capo group in Milan: (L-R) Patrizia Costa, Maria Collini, Michela Solari, Pat Carra, Maura Carra and Piera Bosotti |
Carra’s cartoons are translated into Spanish, Greek and French. Now these cartoons are being embroidered on bags made in small workshops or women’s homes in the slums of Baiganwadi by women belonging to the Lok Seva Sangam (LSS), but their destination, as their inspiration, is Milan.
LSS is working with the women of Baiganwadi in a community development project funded by Fair Med, a Swiss funding agency. The project works towards improving education, sanitation and health in the slum.
Says Ethel D’souza, who manages the activities of LSS, “We were looking for income-generation options to get the women out of rag picking. Then Patricia Costa, an Italian who was helping us remembered her friend Pat Carra’s cartoons.” After discussion with Carra, they decided to put together Carra’s artistic and intellectual work with the technical and practical work of other women, sewers and embroiderers.
“I named the project Punto a Capo: full stop and new paragraph. In Italian it is a play on words between writing and sewing (full stop = stitch),’ says Carra. She goes on to add, “When I create my cartoons on paper I am concise and brief, both in the drawing and in the text. The embroidery takes a different direction, almost opposite. It is necessary to add materials, threads and fabrics, that is to say, touch and volume. It is now a shared art form. Each bag is a unique piece.”
