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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 begins...
...with Kamilla Sultanova
I grew up in South Uzbekistan with limited cultural and social capital - life happened the way that I was drawn to see the world and I did starting at age 15 with exchange studies. Such cross cultural experiences shaped my life and work and I am a cross-cultural trainer. In an anxious world cultural diversity as a bridge to understand our strengths and how to belong together. For cultural diversity to be honoured, we all need to have encounters and lived experiences which teach us beauty of seeing and laughing in various languages, honouring so many more rituals that bring us together. Cultural diversity is beyond all helps us unite, be better, stronger, and live more rich life experiences in Berlin or in Tashkent, in Colombo or in Helsinki. I hope we teach our kids and ourselves to honor our differences and not just stick to what we know.
I hope my daughter one day reads this and also honours her Finnish and Uzbek roots and shows the world we all are filled with joy and wonder, not hate and fear.
This is what Friendship Day looks like in our little corner of Helsinki
Kamilla Sultanova is a walking cultural collab – with Uzbek roots and Danish‑Finnish ties, her family story is already a woven carpet of cultures. In Finland, where Valentine’s Day is Friendship Day and small talk is rare, she reimagines friendship through real encounters: neighbours sharing food, stories and a little dancing, turning strangers into community, one table at a time. With her fragment #91, she carries that spirit into Berlin’s Museum for Islamic Art, showing how trust grows and new CulturalxCollabs emerge whenever people dare to meet, listen and belong together.
Who do you think picked your tea today?
I’m Kamilla Sultanova, connector, multi-passionate entrepreneur, hyper local and global citizen based in Finland. I used to drink tea without a second thought. Then I learned that in Sri Lanka’s green hills, women spend long days hand‑picking famous black Ceylon tea—leaf by leaf, hour by hour—for just a few euros or dollars. That tea travels across the world and lands in our cups in places like Finland… while the women behind it remain almost invisible.
Travelling through tea country, I also visited old bungalows where the early “tea champions” lived and built this industry nearly 160 years ago. Standing there, between the history of power and the present reality of the women in the fields, made it impossible to see tea as “just a drink” anymore.
I was nudged by Sri Lankan friend to follow artist Arulraj Ulaganathan’s powerful stories (exhibition "Plucking The Stars" in Curado Art Space in Colombo) about plantation life, I began to see more clearly: this is about dignity, not just drink. So we gathered Sri Lankan diaspora and Finnish friends around one table. We spilled the tea on tea! We tasted, listened, asked hard questions, and raised funds for Bogawantalawa school in the tea region as a small way to give back.
This is bigger than tea.
It’s about everything we enjoy without knowing the hands behind it and it’s also about how we travel.
When we visit Sri Lanka, or any country, responsible tourism means looking beyond the postcard view. It means asking: what is breathing under each industry here - tea, textiles, carpets, tourism itself? Who is working, who is paid fairly, whose stories are missing?
If you care, don’t just scroll:
- Ask where things come from - both at home and when you travel
- Choose fair and ethical options when you can
- Engage in conversations with locals, listen more than you speak
- Support in small ways - e.g. buy Sri Lankan tea, ask for local crafts, community projects
- Share and uplift local stories that never make it into mainstream news
From tea to textiles, from fields to finished products, from old bungalows to today’s plantations - what if every cup, every carpet, every journey helped weave a better future?
Next time you hold a cup of tea, or book a trip, remember the hands and lives behind it - and choose to make them visible!
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.
Culinary Journeys
Culinary stories of taste, memory, and exchange inspired by fragments of dragon carpet. Part of the CulturalxCollabs - Weaving the Future project.
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?
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.
