Chemould artists: Museum acquisition
Woven Chronicle, 2015
by Reena Saini Kallat
Circuit boards, speakers, electrical wires and fittings
10 min Single Channel Audio
Comissioned and acquired by Vancouver Art Galllery in 2015

Comprised of an intricate web of handwoven electrical wires that entwine to resemble a chain-link fence, Reena Saini Kallat's Woven Chronicle has been amongst her most recognized and travelled works.

The strands are used to create a map of the world overlaid with migration routes that connect people and commodities while simultaneously contributing to cultural barriers. The work references the active transfer of information and energy that results from the mobility and intersection of travelers, and is further accentuated by an ambient soundtrack that evokes the buzz and reverberations of telecommunications, industry and travel.

The porous surface of this map reveales proverbial holes in the naïve utopian idea of a unity through diversity, offering a contemplative sketch of the globalized world.

Woven by Kallat and her assistants from rural villages in India, the map implicates both the artist and the labour of migrant workers who travel to urban centres for economic survival – not only in India, but throughout the world. As a result, the work becomes a complex embroidery of human convergence and its accompanying narratives of connection and conflict.