Exhibition Review - Indigo: The Blue Gold, 2023 at the South Asia Art Institute
Louis Chavey - May 1, 2024
Unraveling Indigo’s Influence with Block Printed Stories of India’s Colonial Past Indigo: The Blue Gold, created by renowned Indian artist Shelly Jyoti, is on display at the South Asia Art Institute from July 22, 2023 to December 26, 2023. Comprised of Jyoti’s past work from the past two decades, the exhibition seeks to examine indigo’s socioeconomic and political influence on India during the 18th and 19th century as well as its lasting impacts today. A handful of free-standing works liven an otherwise standard, somewhat inert display of hanging khadis, or Indian homespun cotton cloths.
The exhibition space itself is also nothing spectacular, featuring nondescript white walls, soft white lighting, and coves delineating and enclosing spaces. Immediately, the hanging Homage to the Farmers of Champaran centers the audience’s viewpoint of indigo on the farmers that were affected, specifically those in the Champaran Satyagraha rebellion against growing indigo crops for the British raj. Referencing the “ecopolitical exploitation” of India by Britain in the Bengali play “Nil Darpan: The Indigo Planting Mirror”, the audio An Ode to Nil Darpan vocalizes the raw emotion behind their suffering and struggles for liberation.1 Moving to the left wall, “2009-2023 Indigo Farmers in Colonial Bengal and Gandhi’s Intervention” expands on this backdrop of suffering to show the interwoven nature of exploitation among farmers, yet its outlook on the farmers’ future is not entirely bleak – that very interconnectedness is what affords them liberation, which the back wall expands upon, showing the triumph of farmers against their oppressors through reclaiming and resurrecting symbols of resistance. Glorified ship imagery seeks to refashion symbols of colonization with beautiful, deeply-rooted creative traditions, and Gandhi’s swadeshi (or self-sufficiency) movement is emblematized by the chakra. The whole right wall temporally and spatially widens the scope of indigo’s impact, bringing focus to its globalized impact today and in the future. The first section in this right wall (“2016-2023 1 “An Contemporary Printed Fashion”) brings this celebration of independence through tradition into more contemporary form and pieces like indigo jackets. “2023 The Mosaic Wall of Indigo:’Red, White, and Black Make Blue’”, the next section in the right wall, explicitly underscores that its globalized use in maritime and national flags – symbolized by red, white, black, and blue squares – is inextricable from the unspeakable working conditions of indigo farmers represented by black and white pieces. The final portion of the right wall is “2023 Trade and Migration: Indigo and Sustainability,” which examines how collective action might combat the deadly environmental cost of modern synthetic indigo.
The exhibition shows the cultural unity and strength of indigo farmers through times of suffering and liberation. The tone-setting piece Homage to the Farmers of Champaran establishes that under an oppressive system, the suffering of an individual is inextricable from the suffering of the whole. Each of the discs is meant to symbolize the unheard and unseen abuse of farmers – the physical toll of unending labor that left some with indigo-stained blue bodies, or the mental toll of shipping indentured laborers and slaves away from their families forever. Each individual’s physical, mental, and emotional suffering can be viewed in isolation, just like how no two discs are stamped with a pattern in the exact same way. However, each disc is connected – the breeze created from walking past the work ripples through every single one, all the way up to the top. Similarly, the pain of one farmer and their family unit is not just isolated to them; it affects their neighbor, extended family, or close friends.
Homage to the Farmers of Champaran, 1917-1918, Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina, 300 textile khadi fabric discs. Image credit: South Asia Institute
While these tightly knit bonds – the strings metaphorically holding individuals together – are indeed force multipliers for suffering, they also serve to spur the population’s eventual liberation. The Spinning Wheel from Jyoti’s Chakra Series expands on the character and origin of this unity at a symbolic and formal level. Once a Buddhist symbol of dharma (or Buddha’s moral code), the central chakra wheel was refashioned to represent unity, freedom, and swavlamban (or self-sufficiency) – one of Gandhi’s core tenets. The swadeshi movement, where Indians would rely on domestic instead of foreign Western goods, was created to combat against the ravages of British exploitative capitalism. While Buddhism’s cultural weight has certainly diminished, its rich connection with India’s cultural conscience provides a springboard for shared understanding among the people. When it comes to galvanizing the general population, the wheel’s cultural importance is more relevant here than meaning, which can be fluid with the current popular cultural connotations as well as just general individual differences in interpretation. At a formal level, the usage of ajrakh style is a testament to the endurance of tradition. Ajrakh has not just survived its multiple millennia lifespan; it is thriving as a medium to represent a cultural flashpoint of liberation. The strength of the bonds running between every individual is because of India’s ability to go beyond simple acknowledgement and truly celebrate their past, allowing for a deep, values-oriented sense of connection that amplifies the shockwaves of liberation.
The Chakra Series: The Spinning Wheel, 2022, Shelly Jyoti, ajrakh painting, dyeing, and needlework on khadi fabric. Image credit: South Asia Institute
Ultimately, the exhibition accomplishes its goal of illustrating the extent of indigo’s human costs. From a curatorial perspective, most of the works on display were not too risky; they all have had proven track records of success from being displayed in the past. Jyoti’s name brand recognition certainly helps with ensuring some sort of popularity from, at the very least, fans of her work. Bringing a different thematic outlook on these works provide a fresh take that captivates newer audiences too – perhaps those who may not know Jyoti but are interested in the enduring ramifications of colonization. Since most of these pieces were already made, the biggest constraint was just the space afforded by the venue – how to transform and breathe life into it in a way that is unique to all the other exhibits of the past. Given this constraint of the venue space, Jyoti was able to navigate the exhibit’s central themes with an artful balance of nuance and brevity. In particular, Homage to the Farmers of Champaran sways with every passing stroll, amplifying and humanizing the global effects of indigo. Centering the exhibit around the piece forces people to reckon with the human costs – the piece breathes and moves just like every farmer that was affected. Far too often, statistics describing the effects of colonization and exploitation are too abstract and grand; however, this central theme of humanity serves to ground the audience in the effect on the individual, reminding them of the truly horrid tolls of indigo production.
My only main critique of the exhibit is that the display of other pieces seem to lose focus of this idea and thus lose connection to the core of the works. Kaftans in the right wall could have been displayed like the contemporary jackets were. As a clothing piece, I feel like it would have been more captivating to have the display create some sort of volume, mirroring the way they would actually be worn in everyday life and viewed from multiple angles. Some of the lighter khadi fabric pieces could have been displayed in ways to make viewing a little less static. One suggestion could be to hang some of the pieces in a wall of cloth, with the backs covered by other khadi pieces; walking past them would create a swaying much like the Homage to the Farmers of Champaran piece. The choice to chronologically display printing blocks after all the khadi works dampens the blocks’ potential didactic impact. Especially since they have such a strong impact on the creation of the khadi fabric works, highlighting the process of block printing much earlier would have bettered my understanding of the khadi fabrics on the left wall – the weight of the ornament pattern and finer square shaped outlines in patterns. Ultimately, Indigo: The Blue Gold invites viewers to contemplate the intertwined history of indigo, colonial exploitation, and contemporary global implications.
Notes
1. “An Ode to Nil Darpan”, 2023
