The spring festival was conceptualized to bring crafts to the Palladium and Phoenix malls in Vellachery, Chennai. Crafts such as Palmyra or fresh flower garland making often are viewed as décor. Jackfruit’s curation worked to create a space for these meticulous crafts in contemporary consumer spaces. When visitors walk in to the mall, they experience these crafts in a large scale through suspended installations. They see something fresh in the mall but also see the familiar anew because of the new context for flower craft.

We invited wedding decor expert Malini Narasimhan and her team, especially garland maker Chandran and Olai or Palmyra weaver Krishnaswamy to be inspired by the artist Rebecca Law’s works to create these installations with us. The cascading shola pith flowers were sourced from Kolkata for a central atrium, intentionally retaining the natural off white colour to calm the visual excess inside the mall. The curation also included an installation using kites by Sachin George Sebastian and Sanjhi Paper works by Ram Singh Soni and Kirti Khatri.