TEXTILE ARCHITECTURES
OF THE SUBCONTINENT
A CHANAKYA PRACTICE, EST. 1986
FOUNDERS
Founded by Karishma Swali and Avantika Swali, Chorus grew out of an ongoing exchange between two generations. Bringing together their respective experiences across design, education, and material practice, the duo sees creation as a way of connecting artistic inquiry with everyday life.
Karishma Swali’s work spans couture, textile development, and cultural preservation. Since 1998, she has led Chanakya International, an embroidery and textile atelier that has collaborated with many of the world’s leading fashion houses. In 2016, she founded the Chanakya School of Craft, a non-profit institution dedicated to expanding access to craft education and reframing embroidery as a site of contemporary expression, authorship, and agency for women. Her contributions have been recognised internationally through honours including the Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite, the Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia, the BOF 500, and the Badass Art Woman Award (BAWA).
Avantika Swali is a social entrepreneur and multidisciplinary artist whose work engages education, environmental responsibility, and collective learning. In 2014, she founded ACE, a non-profit initiative centred on curiosity-led education for children. The programme now works with over 200 students annually and runs the ACE Book Club, a mobile library initiative that expands access to books and cultural resources across underserved communities.
CHANAKYA INTERNATIONAL
Founded in Mumbai in 1984, Chanakya International is a textile and embroidery atelier with a four-decade history of sustaining India’s pluralistic craft traditions across fashion, art, and education. Under the creative direction of Karishma Swali, the house has worked with more than 50 international fashion maisons and contemporary artists, bringing Indian craft systems into dialogue with contemporary visual culture. Its practice challenges conventional distinctions between art and craft, approaching embroidery as a medium of technical precision, material inquiry, and cultural expression.
CHANAKYA FOUNDATION AND CHANAKYA SCHOOL OF CRAFT
Established by Karishma Swali to address questions of cultural continuity, education, and social equity, the Chanakya Foundation works to support India’s artisanal knowledge systems through skill development and craft education. In 2016, it founded the Chanakya School of Craft, a non-profit institution dedicated to creating new pathways for women through craft, culture, and collective learning. The school functions as both a site of learning and experimentation, placing women’s practices and intergenerational knowledge at the centre of cultural inquiry. Working across weaving, hand embroidery, and lacemaking, the school integrates pedagogy with material research through an interdisciplinary approach. Drawing on more than 300 embroidery and weaving traditions, it perpetuates craft as a critical mode of contemporary expression. Since its founding, the school has trained over 1,400 women. Recent institutional presentations include Indigo: The Sky Below (2025) at the Mobilier National, Paris; En Route (2025) at the Vatican Apostolic Library, Rome; and Cosmic Garden (2024), presented as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
The Chanakya School of Craft facilitates collaborations between graduates, master artisans from Chanakya ateliers, and leading contemporary artists. These partnerships aim to dismantle hierarchies within fine art and introduce an interdisciplinary approach to contemporary practice, positioning the school as a model for preserving craft through formal education. In 2020, the school worked with artist Judy Chicago to produce 22 monumental hand-embroidered works, now on view at the New Museum, New York. In 2023, a collaboration with visual artist Mickalene Thomas resulted in large-scale textile portraits exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum. In 2024, Cosmic Garden, presented by the Chanakya Foundation in collaboration with Indian artists Madhvi and Manu Parekh, Karishma Swali, and the Chanakya School of Craft, was featured as a collateral event at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Most recently, in 2025, En Route debuted at the Vatican Apostolic Library — a collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri exploring the cultural legacy of women who challenged historical norms. Created through the collective expression of artisans at the school, the work comprises five textile maps and two globes — contemporary abstractions that examine erasure, rupture, and the untold impact of women throughout history. The Chanakya Foundation and the Chanakya School of Craft reimagine the potential of craft practices, promoting equality, independence, and craft excellence. Their work stands as a testament to the transformative power of collaboration, innovation, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, shaping a sustainable future for craft. and its practitioners.
VALUES
Textile as Architecture
Craft as Language
Collective Authorship
Material Intelligence
Creative Inquiry
Ecological Sensitivity
Cultural Continuity
DESIGN COLLECTIVE
“Chorus is a living archive, a sustained inquiry shaped by the principles of cultural continuity and contemporary expression. A new way of collectively crafting tomorrow.”
— Karishma Swali, Co-founder and Creative Director, Chorus
Anchored in material exploration and interdisciplinary inquiry, Chorus brings together practitioners working across art, design, and craft. The studio cultivates a culture of experimentation, initiative, and technical rigour, where objects emerge through sustained engagement with material, process, and form. At the centre of this practice is the Chanakya atelier, where diverse textile traditions and inherited knowledge shape the evolving language of Chorus.
The atelier also includes co-founders Karishma and Avantika Swali, LVMH Prize-winning designers Tina and Nikita Sutradhar, designer Joohi Mehta, and embroidery specialist Renu Sahu. Bringing together diverse forms of expertise, the collective explores how material, memory, and contemporary craft practice can exist in dialogue.
CRAFT COMMUNITIES
Chorus is informed by sustained engagement with craft communities across the Indian subcontinent. By working closely with weavers, embroiderers, dyers, and makers whose practices are rooted in specific geographies and cultural histories, the atelier creates pathways between inherited knowledge and contemporary design.
These relationships form the foundation of the practice, ensuring that regional craft traditions remain active contributors to the future of material culture. Chorus works with Angami Naga weavers in Khonoma, Nagaland, whose textiles are woven on the backstrap loom; Saliyar weavers in Kurinjipadi, Tamil Nadu, who produce Madras checks on pit looms; Khatri artisans in Jaipur, whose expertise lies in tie-dye; and the weaving communities of Ilkal, Karnataka, where cotton and silk are brought together using traditional handloom techniques. These textiles are then developed within the Chanakya atelier, where, for over four decades, a community of master artisans has preserved and evolved India's textile knowledge through embroidery, weaving, and surface-making traditions. Together, these relationships establish a practice in which regional craft traditions continue to evolve through contemporary design.
STEWARDSHIP
ECOLOGICALChorus approaches stewardship through material responsibility, long-term thinking, and sustained engagement with craft communities. Working with handwoven kala cotton from Kutch, FSC-certified viscose, eri silk, natural dyes, and repurposed textiles, material choices are guided by durability, traceability, and environmental consideration. While Chorus meets global standards, including PETA-Approved Vegan, Green Business Certification, ISO 14001, and ISO 9001, sustainability is understood as an ongoing practice rather than a fixed benchmark.
CULTURAL This commitment extends beyond materials to the continuity of knowledge, community, and skilled handwork. Longstanding collaborations with women-led weaving communities and regional craft networks support local economies, ecological knowledge, and vernacular systems of making, ensuring that traditional practices continue to evolve within contemporary design. Through the Chanakya School of Craft, a non-profit institute and artist collective, women are trained in over 300 embroidery and textile techniques, creating long-term pathways for the transmission of intergenerational knowledge and economic independence.