Hamesha Project

Pallavi Sarup is a Bay Area–based visual artist working primarily in textiles and portraiture. Her practice explores the interconnected tapestry of ancestral craft, community, and nature, inviting viewers to consider how these realms shape identity and connect us across cultures and time. Drawing from traditional South Asian textile techniques—including Bandhani (tie-and-dye resist work), mirror work embroidery from Gujarat, and Phulkari embroidery from Punjab—Pallavi blends ancestral motifs with contemporary design to create deeply personal works of art.

In addition to textile techniques passed down through generations, Pallavi incorporates natural dyes made from foraged plants and mushrooms, experimenting with their shifting colors to create textiles rooted in place and time. By leaning on familial craft traditions while deriving color from the land around her, Pallavi’s work becomes a holistic expression of her queer South Asian American identity—bridging heritage, landscape, and contemporary culture.

Pallavi’s broader artistic and community work is carried through Hamesha Project, an initiative dedicated to uplifting South Asian craft and restoring cultural nuance within the textile world. Through thoughtfully developed craft kits, workshops, and community programming, Hamesha Project creates accessible entry points for people to engage with ancestral South Asian crafts from their own homes and communities. Each kit is the result of extensive research and testing to ensure that the experience honors the history, techniques, and cultural context of the craft.

Rooted in Pallavi’s family history of migration and displacement, her work also examines how textiles carry stories of movement, resilience, and memory across generations. Fiber has long traveled along trade routes, connecting distant cultures through cloth, technique, and design. Through both her art and Hamesha Project, Pallavi traces these threads of connection while building new ones—bringing together South Asian, BIPOC, and queer artists & communities through collaborative organizing and cultural programming.

As a Bay Area artist, Pallavi is also committed to grounding her work in the landscapes she inhabits. By incorporating California dye plants and fungi into her practice, she bridges her South Asian heritage with her American environment, creating textiles that embody both lineage and place. Ultimately, her work asks us to see textiles not simply as objects, but as living records of our shared human story—threads that tie us together across borders, histories, and identities.