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This fragment is part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" carpet.
Through the fragment we trace the journey of the fragment owners and their collabs as they explore, experiment and creatively advance socially relevant themes. Here is the fragment as we are sending it on this three and a half-year journey.
Follow this story to observe the transformations the fragment undergoes over the course of these years...
The journey continues...
...with Apoorva Iyengar
Is there an End?
A fragment implies ‘incompleteness’, a part broken from the whole. It comes from the Latin fragmentum, meaning a piece broken off, or from frangere, “to break.”
This notion of a fragment experienced a shift in 18th-century Europe, as pieces of a sculpture valorised the fragment as more potent, more expressive than the whole. For the advocate of 18th-century European Romanticism, the fragment is complete in itself, while remaining fragmentary in relation to a larger whole.
I receive the Dragon carpet fragment as a complete piece in my home. I contemplate its whole, the parent body, and I also contemplate its further fragmentation. My mind is in a loop.
Schlegel writes in the Athenaeum Fragment 206 - a fragment is like a small work of art, it has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself - like a hedgehog.
Gazing at the piece of cloth I have, its rustic colours, tightly stitched edges, I first see it as a complete work. It does not arise in me a desire to know what grows beyond its edges. I turn the piece over, and read ‘15/100’, the 15th fragment of 100 different fragments. I henceforth think and talk about it as a fragment, and not a whole.
But what if I never knew the existence of a complete whole form? My piece is both, 15/100 and 1/1.
Credits
Music Composer: Anjo John
Video Edit: Sabari Pandian
For Schlegel, the incompletion of a fragment renders it as a sign of a movement beyond itself, whereby it would be completed; it is always in the ‘state of becoming’. Might this sign of movement also be directed towards its further disintegration, a constant, continuous rupture? It is always in the state of ‘becoming, and unbecoming’.
I once worked on the restoration of 18th-century war flags or colours. Heavily tattered fabrics kept disintegrating in my hands. The more it disintegrated, the more was the desire for its movement towards a completion, a kind of restoring it to a ‘complete fragment’.
In Linda Nochlin’s The Body in Pieces, she traces a shift from fragmentation as an expression of loss and nostalgia about vanished totality toward fragmentation as an active, even revolutionary, mode of destruction and representation - enacting the deliberate destruction of the repressive past, making way for the new. She goes on to explore the human body shown in pieces through art, thereby deliberating on the notion of a fragment as a metaphor for sacrifice, obscenity, and as expressing suggestive overturns.
Perhaps the presence of a fragment raises within us an anxiety. Of loss, of never being complete. It indicates the will to destroy and the will to restore simultaneously. Here, there is no end; it is a loop.
A long grid laid out, the dimensions of each square corresponding to the knots of the hand-woven carpet. The drawing further fragmenting the carpet, knot-by-knot. Each knot is drawn, errors of a hand drawn process embedded in it.
Where does this end?
The sound builds towards an impending end, or beginning or both (?) - echoing a continuous loop. It builds and fragments simultaneously, rhythmically like the motion of a mechanical handloom. The drawing, or the carpet, never ends.
...AND ON WE GO...
...with Pravali Vangeti
Crafting Empowerment through Culture
At the cusp of pivoting my career from design to cultural heritage, I followed a whim and spent a couple of weeks in July 2017 in the remote village of Mithapur in Gujarat, India, where the craftswomen of the Rabari tribe spend their days weaving and sewing magic with their hands. I was there to work with Okhai, an initiative launched by the TATA Chemicals Society for Rural Development (TCSRD) to provide livelihoods for women in rural communities.
Over an unending supply of chai, I discovered the rich variety of crafts these women practiced. I joined the Okhai team as we set out to recruit more women from neighbouring villages—encouraging them to join the initiative during their non-farming seasons and turn their remarkable inherited skills into sustainable livelihoods. While there were many cultural nuances and sensitivities to navigate—each deserving careful respect—I was welcomed into every village and every home with a smile warmer than the tea they offered.
There are too many rewarding moments from those two weeks to recount, but one remains deeply meaningful: by the end of our visit, 99 women from surrounding villages had agreed to join Okhai, choosing to bring greater agency to their talent.
Every time I come across a piece of woven heritage—like the dragon carpet fragment—I’m transported back to the saline landscapes and ceaseless winds of Okhamandal, and to the proud women of the Rabari tribe whose craft continues to shape my understanding of culture and continuity.
I pass the fragment of the dragon carpet replica to the next participant in the hope that their interactions with culture have been as gratifying as mine!
Tales of Tapestries
Three threads, three lands — one tapestry of memory stitched into the story of a traveler.
From the vivid appliqué of India, where cloth tells stories through needle and light—
To the earthen Kilims of Morocco, woven in rhythm with desert winds and ancient songs—
To a dragon-fragment from the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin, whispering silk secrets of dynasties past—
these woven fragments are more than fabric. They are tokens of footsteps traced across borders, markets, museums, and moments. Their colour, texture, and tradition are living languages, spoken by hands across centuries.
These tapestries (at least two of them), are now part of my world, reminders that I am at my essence, when I am consumed in culture. Any culture.
As part of #CulturalXCollabs, I’d love to share how these woven wonders connect time, place, and purpose, bridging borders not with walls, but with our shared heritage.
The journey begins...
...with Michel Venne of World Heritage Studies Program @BTU in Cottbus
From across the world students come to Cottbus, Germany to study heritage and culture. Out of place and in an unfamiliar land, these individuals gather every year to welcome the new incoming batch of students to the World Heritage Studies program. Exchanging food, stories, and passions, this event marks the first of many which weave the student body into a powerful whole.
World Heritage Studies Welcome Dinners
In a traditional show of cultural collaboration, World Heritage Studies students at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg have passed the fragment to their yearly welcome dinners held with first year and second year students. As an international student body with over 34 countries represented, these dinners allow people of different cultures and background to unite in Cottbus over food, creating the rich tapestry of an international student body.
Front and Back
About the Project
The Museum for Islamic Art's project, #CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the future, celebrates the transformative power of cultural exchange and the shared threads that unite us all. All the things we love, have loved and will ever love come from cultural exchange, migration and diversity, or as we like to call it #CulturalxCollabs.
100 carpet fragments, cut from a replica of the iconic dragon carpet, will travel the world (delivered by DHL). The fragments will ignite #CulturalxCollabs with co-creators, inspiring human ingenuity, fostering community and ultimately demonstrating how cultural exchange enriches all our lives.
Follow #CulturalxCollabs on Instagram as the project unfolds...
...or learn more here
Weaving the Future
Join us on a journey with 100 carpet fragments as they travel around the world for three and a half years, finding temporary homes while bridging cultural boundaries, fostering worldwide community united by the power of human stories.
Fragment Journeys
100 carpet fragments part of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project. Follow their journeys through the ever changing owners' over three and a half years.
Creating a carpet
A 17th-century Caucasian carpet, burned by an incendiary bomb during the Second World War, serves as the model for a replica, woven in 2022 by a family in Rajasthan, India. Over 2.3 million knots later, it is being sent out into the world in 100 fragments. This is the story of how it came to be.
Where is the Dragon?
The star of the "CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future" project is a so-called Caucasian dragon carpet from the 17th century. A dragon carpet - all well and good - but: where is the dragon?
