EXHIBITION: Indigo: New Works By Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina (Baroda, New Dehli, Mumbai; Dec 2009 - Jan 2010)
09 December 2009
Employing fair trade embroidery artisans from women’s collectives in India and executing their works in indigo blue, Indian artist SHELLY JYOTI and US artist LAURA KINA’S new works draw upon India’s history, narratives of immigration and transnational economic interchanges.
“Not a chest of indigo reached England without being stained with human blood”, an Englishman in the Bengal Civil Service is said to have commented. In the 19th century, Bengal was the world’s biggest producer of indigo but today, the deep blue color of indigo is synthetically created in a lab and is associated, in the West, with blue jeans more than its torrid colonial past. But indigo holds a sustained presence in the post-colonial identity of India. Employing fair trade embroidery artisans from women’s collectives in India and executing their works in indigo blue, Indian artist SHELLY JYOTI and US artist LAURA KINA’S new works draw upon India’s history, narratives of immigration and transnational economic interchanges. Shelly Jyoti’s Indigo Narratives utilize traditional embroidery, embellishments, and azrak resist dye techniques along with heritage symbols belonging to traveling ethnic communities who settled in coastal Gujarat while Laura Kina’s Devon Avenue Sampler series focuses on a contemporary Desi/Jewish community in Chicago, IL.
To view their works visit:
Indigo: New Works By Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina
Preview: Red Earth Gallery Baroda, Gujarat; December 15-16, 2009; Reception: December 15, 2009 5:30-8:00 pm, artists will be present; Red Earth Art Galleries Pvt. Ltd, ABS Towers, Old Padra Road Vadodara, India 390007, Tel: 91 265 3201526, www.redearthgalleries.com
India Habitat Centre New Delhi; December 22-28, 2009; Opening Reception: December 23, 2009, 5:30-9:00 pm, artists will be present; Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre Lodhi Road, New Delhi, India 110003, http://www.indiahabitat.org/
Nehru Art Centre; January 12-18, 2010; Opening Reception: 12 January, 5:30-8:00 pm, Shelly Jyoti will be present; Dr. Annie Besant Road Worli, Mumbai, India 400018, Tel: 91 22 2496 4676-80, Fax: 91 22 2497 3827, http://www.nehru-centre.org/artgallery.html
Forum for Contemporary Theory
Laura Kina Artist Lecture - “Diaspora on Devon Ave: Stitching South Asian/Jewish Intersections”
Shelly Jyoti Artist Lecture - “The Politics of Indigo: Revisting India’s Torrid Colonial past”
December 31, 2009 4:00 pm; Centre for Contemporary Theory and General Semantics, C-304 Siddhi Vinayak Complex, Framji Road, Baroda-390 007, Gujarat, India, Tel (0265) 2338067, http://fctworld.org/