Two communal quilts made by more than 200 people anchor Sahana Rahman’s Uxbridge exhibition
An exhibition of traditional Bengali embroidery opening at Uxbridge in Howick on Saturday 17 October will double as a workshop, with visitors invited to sit down and add their own stitches.
Nokshi Kotha: Storytelling through Stitch is the work of textile and community artist Sahana Rahman, and runs in the Malcolm Smith Gallery until 19 December.
At its centre are two communal quilts, made over five years by more than 200 workshop participants around New Zealand.
Through the quilts, Rahman said, she had “witnessed collective joy, created space for vulnerable yet healing conversations and connection through the traditional art of stitching.”
Nokshi kantha is an embroidery tradition from Bengal and Bengali-speaking communities in India, stitched onto a base of old, worn clothing layered into a quilt.
Rahman uses its motifs, colours and combinations to tell chapters of her own life, and the show follows her from her first kantha to recent work in shisha, or mirror, embroidery.
Some of the pieces are not finished.
“Some kantha works are still ongoing pieces, because this practice is traditionally slow,” she said.
The skill has been handed down through generations of Bengali women, and Rahman said it was “increasingly at risk of being lost in a fast-paced world shaped by mass production.”
She set up the Nokshi Kotha Workshop in 2022 in response to her own social anxiety after the pandemic, and hopes to revive the tradition.
Rahman, who is of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan Tamil heritage, was born and raised in Wellington.
She graduated from Massey University with a fine arts honours degree in 2022 and moved to Auckland the following year to work as an artist full-time.
Last year she held the Asian Arts Fund Visual Arts Residency, supported by Satellites, Te Tuhi and Foundation North.
She also showed a solo exhibition, Katha O Maatram: Stories of Belonging, at Studio One Toi Tu in 2025.
On opening day, children can make recycled foil artwork inspired by the exhibition with The Art Cupboard from 9.30am to 11.30am.
Rahman will give an artist talk and lead a workshop at 12.30pm.
The opening day events are free, with donations welcome and no booking needed.
The stitching space stays open for the whole exhibition, and no experience is needed to join in.
Uxbridge said more workshops with guest artists and embroiderers would be announced once dates were confirmed.
