A visual excerpt from a craft documentation, this series of photographs journeys through textiles that are made by the Panka community in favour of tribal communities of the region. Tracing back at the iconography of the motifs woven onto these textiles, there is a familiarity of exchange in the form of forest goods extracted by tribals bartered with textiles woven for them by the Panka community. A specific type of Pata is woven for different occasions to be worn, gifted or offered and the way it is draped, tightened or layered shifts along. Sharing stories around fires and under trees, beside running streams of water and spotting animals that become entities of worship, becomes the center point of motifs. The textile is made using kora cotton at large with borders of deep earthy red that comes from aal roots, a dyeing practice prevailing among the women of the Panka community across generations in the village of Kotpad, it involves a tedious set of steps. The men of the region then weave in Kotpad and the neighbouring village of Bastar. Over time, the craft contemporised to travel beyond tribal communities that once draped it, altering the touch and feel to finer counts of yarns that meet urban wearers in the present day. This set of images begins with the maker and ends with the wearer, in their origin.

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Tribal textiles of Kotpad in Orissa bordering with Bastar in Chattisgarh, India.