Craft traditions are often imagined as practices rooted in the past: carefully preserved techniques passed from one generation to the next. But Unbound Forms at The Hepworth Wakefield reveals a more dynamic story. Bringing together the work of five pioneering women artists from India and Bangladesh, the exhibition shows how materials such as textiles, metal, ceramic, wood and paint can be transformed into works that honour inherited skills while pushing them into new territory.

The artists in the exhibition lived through a period of enormous change. Four were alive when India gained independence in 1947, while Mrinalini Mukherjee was born just two years later, in 1949. Their work emerged from the newly formed nations of India and Bangladesh, where traditions of making, craft and cultural identity were being reasserted. Across the galleries, familiar processes including wood carving, metal casting, weaving and knotting, are reimagined as tools for experimentation and personal expression.

One of the themes that recurs throughout the exhibition is that of sculptures as deities. Ritu Raja, meaning “ruler of seasons”, by Mrinalini is made from two shades of natural hemp, folded to imply both male and female genitalia. The cylinder at the base of the sculpture recalls a lingam – a phallus representing the god Shiva in Hinduism. The male........

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