Artist Statement CI
My journey with indigo began in 2008, through a collaboration with Laura Kina, an American artist of Japanese heritage and Professor Emerita at DePaul University, Chicago. Approaching indigo through our different cultural histories, we discovered how this modest plant could connect beauty and craftsmanship with histories of trade, colonial exploitation, forced labour and migration. Our exhibition travelled across continents to fourteen venues. As my work increasingly centred on the indigo farmers of eastern India and Gandhi’s Champaran movement, the journey gradually took an independent direction.
My early works emerged from an encounter with the suffering of indigo farmers, the Nil Darpan, the Indigo Revolt and Gandhi’s intervention in Champaran. This inquiry led me towards Gandhi’s ideas of swadharma, swadeshi, swaraj, sarvodaya and swavlamban, which became a language for my own self-introspection. Khadi, the charkha and Ajrakh became my means of speaking about freedom, self-reliance and collective action.
In 2023, an invitation from the South Asia Institute in Chicago brought me back to the indigo narrative I had begun in 2008. I began to look beyond the field and towards the ocean, tracing how indigo seduced the world and travelled through maritime trade routes. Over the past two years, my attention has shifted again—from the movement of the commodity to the movement of people and crafts, and to the displacement, loss, memory and regeneration carried with them.
My works begin with research and take shape on large imperial sheets in my Gurugram studio before being realised with artisans in Ajrakhpur. Over time, I have come to understand Ajrakh not simply as a technique, but as a living archive. I work with patterns drawn from 300–400-year-old blocks when they speak to my subject, bringing their inherited knowledge into a contemporary visual language. This retrospective is therefore not only a journey through my work with indigo, but also a journey of learning—to listen to what materials, histories, crafts and communities continue to remember.