Roti Kapada aur Makaan - Bread, Cloth and the Making of a Home

Dear friends,

For many years now, I have carried these words with me: Roti, Kapada aur Makaan. Bread, cloth, and the making of a home.

It is the title of a 1974 Bollywood film, but to me, these words hold something much larger: the essentials that sustain us, the things we make and share, and the places and communities we build around one another.

I have been passionate about this possibility for a very long time, and I’m finally beginning this series of gatherings in my studio at studio ruyee.

I am an immigrant. I have received so much from the communities I have been fortunate enough to be part of, and I feel a deep responsibility to give back. Living in Minneapolis, and in the current environment we are all navigating, I feel an urgency to respond in the way I know best: by opening a door, setting a table, and creating a safe space for us to come together.

studio ruyee invites you to a new series of gatherings inspired by the tradition of the salon — a space for conversation, exchange, curiosity, and shared inquiry.

We’ll gather around the everyday things that shape our lives: food, clothing, shelter, home, making, and the spaces in which we come together.

Each gathering will begin with a simple word or idea:

Roti — bread, labor, sustenance, hunger, feeding.

Kapada — cloth, textiles, adornment, protection, making.

Makaan — shelter, dwelling, belonging, architecture, refuge.

Home — inheritance, memory, migration, displacement, hospitality.

Making — craft, care, domestic labor, building, tending.

Studio — a place of making, gathering, exchange, experimentation, and possibility.

These words are not separate. They are deeply intertwined.

Through conversation, storytelling, food, objects, art, and lived experience, we’ll make room for some of the more intimate questions beneath the everyday:

What do we need to live?

What do we make for one another?

What does it mean to belong somewhere?

Who gets to make a home?

What forms of labor remain unseen?

What do we inherit — and what do we choose to make anew?

For our first gathering , I’m delighted to welcome Amanda Hunt, Head of Public Engagement, Learning & Impact at the Walker Art Center, who will help us open the series and begin a conversation about the ways we gather, make meaning, and build community.

The studio becomes both a place and a proposition: a room where we can gather, make, think, eat, listen, and exchange.

Come as you are. Bring your curiosity, your stories, and your questions.

I hope you’ll join me for this first gathering a space for generous conversation, connection, and the unfinished work of making a life, together.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, and I’m very happy to finally open the door.

With warmth,

Anita Gopalaswamy

studio ruyee