THE MOSAIC WALL OF INDIGO: “Red, White, and Black Make Blue”
by Lisa Trivedi, Christian A. Johnson Professor of Teaching Excellence and History, Hamilton College
In conversation with Andrea Feeser’s 2013 book on indigo cultivation in South Carolina, Red, White, and Black Make Blue, Jyoti uses natural dyes, including indigo, to create an ajrakh on khadi installation that bears witness to the farmers whose lives we cannot otherwise recover from the historical record.
Jyoti designs each ajrakh block around a sphere to sensitize the viewer to the global nature of the indigo trade and its effects. Traditional ajrakh geometric patterns are redeployed to emphasize the standardization of production and the monotony of plantation-scale agriculture. Eight white and black pieces are juxtaposed here to signal the injustice and inhumanity that characterized the forced cultivation of indigo. This was a process paid for dearly by brown and black laborers who endured unspeakable working conditions in order to produce a commodity that brought extraordinary profit for traders across the globe. Red and white reference maritime flags that appeared regularly on the open seas accompanying Indigo, the most precious cargo of its era. Five red blocks reference nautical signals and motifs, including a compass’ cardinal directions and triangles that plot the course of ships used for transporting indigo and laborers around the Cape of Good Hope to ports on the West Coast of Africa and Europe, as well as to the islands of the Caribbean and the American South. Seven red, white, black, and blue squares are drawn from a larger collection of 30 squares to emphasize the ubiquitous use of indigo in national flags around the world, including the British Union Jack and the US Stars and Stripes.
The beauty of indigo should not be appreciated without awareness of the human cost of its production. According to Catherine McKinley’s 2011 Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World, Indigo was a more powerful commodity in the eighteenth century than the gun, sugar, or cotton. As the profitability of indigo grew, cultivation expanded from South Asia to the United States and eventually the Caribbean where Indian indentured laborers eventually migrated and African slaves were traded, leaving behind families and homelands never to return. Whether indentured or enslaved by Portuguese, British, Dutch, French, or Americans, Indians and Africans carried knowledge of indigo cultivation and textile production with them, continuing to use the dye in their rituals and clothing. In order to satisfy the global demand and Western appetite for indigo in the late 18th and 19th centuries, Indian tenant farmers in South Asia and enslaved Africans in the United States and Caribbean were forced to produce the crop under unspeakable conditions. Productivity was maximized regardless of the toll it took on farmers. Expanded production also led to farmers being over-exposed to the plant during its harvest and processing, literally turning their bodies blue. The history of indigo trade thus links communities across the “Global South” to those of the West in important, if unsettling,
Wall Text
Jyoti uses natural dyes, including indigo, to create ajrakh on khadi that bears witness to the farmers whose lives we cannot otherwise recover from the historical record. Jyoti designs each ajrakh block around a sphere to sensitize the viewer to the global nature of the indigo trade and its effects. Traditional ajrakh geometric patterns are redeployed to emphasize the standardization of production and the monotony of plantation-scale agriculture. Eight white and black pieces are juxtaposed here to signal the injustice and inhumanity that characterized the forced cultivation of indigo. This was a process paid for dearly by brown and black farmers who endured unspeakable working conditions in order to produce a commodity that brought extraordinary profit for traders across the globe. Red and white reference maritime flags that appeared regularly on the open seas accompanying Indigo, the most precious cargo of its era. Five red blocks reference nautical signals and motifs, including a compass’ cardinal directions and triangles that plot the course of ships used for transporting indigo and laborers around the Cape of Good Hope to ports on the West Coast of Africa and Europe, as well as to the islands of the Caribbean and the American South. Seven red, white, black, and blue squares are drawn from a larger collection of 30 squares to emphasize the ubiquitous use of indigo in national flags around the world, including the British Union Jack and the US Stars and Stripes.
The beauty of indigo should not be appreciated without awareness of the human cost of its production. According to Catherine McKinley’s Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World (Bloomsbury, 2011), Indigo was a more powerful commodity in the eighteenth century than the gun, sugar, or cotton. As the profitability of indigo grew, cultivation expanded from South Asia to the United States and eventually the Caribbean where Indian indentured laborers eventually migrated and African slaves were traded, leaving behind their families and homelands never to return. In order to satisfy the global demand and Western appetite for indigo, Indian tenant farmers in South Asia and enslaved Africans in the United States and Caribbean were forced to produce the crop under unspeakable conditions. Productivity was maximized regardless of the toll it took on farmers. Expanded production also led to farmers being over-exposed to the plant during its harvest and processing, literally turning their bodies blue. The history of indigo trade thus links communities across the “Global South” to those of the West in important, if unsettling, ways.