CRAFT & RESEARCH

Craft engagement is central to PATI’s work in Jodhpur, where living traditions of making shape the city’s cultural fabric and contemporary artistic practice alike. Rooted in long-term research and collaboration, this work grows from sustained engagement with artisans and craft communities, where knowledge is shared through experimentation and collective making. Working across wood, metal, sandstone, textiles, terracotta and other material traditions, PATI has developed collaborations with communities including the Chhipas, Meghwals, Bishnois, Suthars, Lohars, Prajapats, Manihars, Kansaras and Swarnkars.

These collaborations inform discourse, production, and the development of contemporary artwork, extending traditional techniques into new forms while positing craft as a dynamic, evolving knowledge system. Here, Jodhpur itself becomes a site of making, where art emerges through shared skill, inherited memory and evolving practice.

Across its projects, the approach centres on embodied learning, dialogue with artisans and musicians, and recognising communities as co-researchers. It aims to build archives, create intergenerational learning labs, and develop a “City as Museum” framework that is guided by regenerative knowledge development. The work seeks to sustain knowledge while enabling new forms of cultural transmission and engagement.