Shradha Kochhar on Threading the Needle with Care and Community

Award-winning textile artist Shradha Kochhar is renowned for her elaborate handspun knitted essays and khadi sculptures made of Kala cotton, techniques deeply rooted not only in the principles of sustainability, but also in Kochhar’s own attempt at deepening the collective memory of indigenous Indian textile work outside of Western influence. Born in Delhi but now based in Brooklyn, Kochhar brings these philosophies to her sold-out Drawing with Yarn workshop, a meditative haven that encourages people to slow down and play with texture, fabric, and their own creativity. Kochhar sat with journalist Ayesha Le Breton to chat about the outpour of support to her sessions, and how she began building a decolonial and intimate artistic practice to process grief and also create community.

Ayesha: What was the first textile you remember making?

Shradha: I used to sew a lot growing up. My father ran a garment factory, and I spent a lot of time with him there, learning how to sew with the karigars. For my family, textiles are so sacred. My paternal grandmother was a single parent of four boys. She knew how to knit, and she started selling these sweaters to take care of the family and get them out of poverty. Even though I went to fashion school, this ancestral university was bigger than any education I’ve had.

Ayesha: How does your Indian heritage influence your artistic practice?

Shradha: I spent the first 25 years of my life in India. Everything is informed by my roots: how I look at material, my work with cotton. It’s only evolved, now charting parallels between the legacy of cotton in India and America.

It also informs the way I interact with people and prioritize community. I’ve grown up around 15 people in the house at all times. I’ve knit with my grandmother, where my job was to massage her feet, and my mom’s job was to wind the yarn around her knees into balls. I try to recreate that dynamic in New York [with my workshops]; sharing skills, sharing conversations, giggles, songs, politics around a dinner table.

Workshop participants watch on, as Shradha shows her duplicate knit stitch tutorial.

Ayesha: What drew you to indigenous Kala cotton as the primary material for your art?

Shradha: I always saw my father in a crisp cotton Kurta pajama; that was his uniform. Cotton is meant to be this material that’s protecting you, taking care of you. It exists so viscerally and so universally: from medical bandages to tampons. It’s such an intimate material, and the only material that is talked about in India, exclusively—at least in the North Indian context. I was always somebody who was interested in origin. But I was working with wool and acrylic that I was just buying from yarn shops. Then my curiosity and guilt started: of making and not really knowing.

Then, I visited Kachchh [a district in Gujarat] where I spent time in a craft cluster, and saw how yarn is spun. In my brain, there was a hook that couldn’t let that visual go.

I started doing a lot of research at agricultural institutes in India. I found out most cotton [in India] was GMO strains exported from Alabama or America generally. There was a point when the only cotton grown in India was Kala, but now it’s only 3%, because it wasn’t compatible with British machinery. This heirloom cotton, which requires the love, the care, the patience of the hand, was copy-pasted to give the opposite of individuality; it needed to be homogeneous. When I was learning more about the material, it started making sense that we still live those realities today. The power is just in different hands this time. Now it’s my life’s work: it’s meant to be a mirror. This material is still so political and incredible. It offers so much beauty and care to people every day.

Ayesha: Your hand-knitted essays and Khadi sculptures are tangible archives of the personal and collective, deeply rooted in intergenerational healing and memory. Why do these themes resonate so strongly with you?

Shradha: When I lost my dad [in 2021], the only thing that I could think of tangibly was cotton. My life’s work is to build a monument, a soft monument, for my father. I think loss makes you lose your mind. You’re always trying to grip to something tactile that you can hold, and you can really bring yourself back to reality with.

Even though I’m making from a very specific place of loss, it’s also universal. I’m not the only one who has shared history with Kala cotton—it existed in parts of Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. I’m juggling between micro and macro histories. It’s very intentional, my removal of color, the absence is thought through. The work needs to feel like a drawing book. Everyone comes in with their own creativity.

Last meal together.jpg

A floating knitted tapestry made from handspun and handknit Kala, unravelling interpersonal loss.

Ayesha: Could you elaborate on what creating art means to you?

Shradha: It’s a mode of survival for me. Who is truly at the end of the day there for me? It’s my spinning wheel and my hands that are capable of transforming.

One of my aspirations is to make art more accessible: Is that through conversations? Or through having people over in the home studio? For them to see how artists live, away from the gallery system or nonprofits where the realities are embellished and on a pedestal.

Ayesha: Sunday, November 9, was your final workshop of the year. Can you share more on what inspired you to open your studio to the public and host Drawing with Yarn?

Shradha: I was so exhausted from having opened a solo show that I was facing burnout. And I’ve always made [things] in isolation. But I’ve also always hosted people. My studio transitions into a living space where we’re eating a meal, we’re talking about art, we’re making, questioning, brainstorming. My practice talks about self-reliance. The fact that I can take a seed and transform it into cloth is the most self-reliant thing I know how to do. So how do I make my own opportunities? One way was to bring people together.

In my personal practice, I’ve truly enjoyed the duplicate knit stitch. I was making a lot of these [knit] drawings of me and my father during the funeral rituals. It was me and 40 to 50 people in a house. Everyone knew I still had to graduate. I still had to do my thesis work, so everyone was helping me knit these drawings. I never put that work out, but it became this personal archive of that very specific moment— a gesture of care. But now I just wanted to offer the technique to everyone who would be interested.

The workshop immediately sold out the first time. It’s made me value community exponentially over any institution.

Shradha pointing out art she’s made using the duplicate stitch that we were all about to learn in her workshop.

Ayesha: Tell me more about this experience of communal art making, and what are some key takeaways?

Shradha: It was also scary to have strangers. But again, I like reminding myself to be generous. It’s been so incredible. I made so many friends. We’ve had nine workshops, with about 15 to 17 people in each session. These workshops became a melting pot, which is a reflection of New York.

Shradha’s best friend Cheryl showing off her cherry in progress.

Ayesha: What’s next?

Shradha: Resting. I do have things in the works that I’m super excited about. I’m turning 30 next month, and I’ve been in the art world long enough to know what works for me, what I don’t stand for, and what I stand for: I want more agency as an artist. Next year, the way that’s going to show up is I’m doing a lot of limited edition objects that would be more accessible, and will be sold directly through my studio versus a gallery.

I want more people to live with my work.