Shelly Jyoti latest exhibition explores Indigo, migration, and textile art

For Delhi artist Shelly Jyoti, a ship is more than a vessel, a school of fish more than a representation of aquatic life, and a human being more than a form.

On view at Bikaner House, her exhibition ‘Indigo: The Blue Gold II’ brings together over 18 years of engagement with the dye, tracing its history from the exploitation of farmers in eastern India to its global trade and the migration of people and craft traditions. Using khadi textiles and block prints, the exhibition, which also presents her latest body of work, Indigo: Migration Through Time, brings displaced communities into focus.

Why should you drop by Shelly Jyoti's exhibition in Delhi?

Jyoti’s journey with indigo began in 2008, when she collaborated with Japanese-American artist Laura Kina on a project exploring the dye’s shared histories in India and Japan. “As an Indian artist, I explored the role of indigo in India’s freedom struggle,” she says, describing how her research led her to the farmers of eastern India, their exploitation and their revolt. The resulting body of work travelled to India and across the US between 2009 and 2014.

Her early works explored the farmers’ struggles and Mahatma Gandhi’s intervention in Champaran, Bihar, in 1917. She also began looking beyond the fields to understand how the dye travelled across continents and became a coveted commodity.

Her 2023 exhibition, ‘Indigo: The Blue Gold’, explored the dye’s global trade, using ships as a recurring motif to trace its movement from Indian shores. In Kochi, Jyoti encountered historical cartographic images of vessels used in maritime trade. After studying their structures and experimenting with different forms, she settled on a design that became central to her work. “I wanted it to be very specific that the ship should look like an 18th-century ship,” she says.

Through textile works depicting merchant vessels, she linked the movement of indigo to the systems of trade and labour that sustained it. Yet after the 2023 exhibition, she felt that part of the story remained untold. “I explored indigo dye, the trade, capitalism and the indignity faced by farmers, along with the dark history of indigo. But I didn’t talk about the migration of these indentured labourers,” she says.

Between homelands

In her latest body of work, ‘Indigo: Migration Through Time’, Jyoti turns her attention to people transported away from their homelands under exploitative labour arrangements as indigo became part of global commerce. The exhibition unfolds through three interconnected sections: Faceless Journeys, Displaced Ecologies and Unresolved Geographies.

Human heads and figures become a primary motif in these works, marking a departure from the ships and charkhas that characterised the earlier stages of her practice. In Faceless Journeys, the figures represent people separated from their homes and familiar surroundings, whose individual experiences have largely disappeared from historical accounts.

“These are faceless journeys,” Jyoti says. “These people have gone through a lot of geographical changes.” By leaving the figures without distinct faces, she draws attention to the anonymity of people whose labour enabled the movement of commodities across continents. Their stories speak of separation, uncertainty and the struggle to establish a life elsewhere.

The idea continues in Unresolved Geographies; it considers the emotional experience of leaving one place for another. “You leave one country and then you go to another country. You are neither here nor there,” she says, describing the predicament of people who continue to remember their homeland while trying to survive in unfamiliar surroundings.

Fish, another recurring motif, offers a way to express this collective movement. The artist imagines schools of fish travelling together through water, creating currents as they move. For her, the image speaks to communities whose journeys are shaped by individual experiences as well as collective strength. “When multiple fishes pool together in water, and they bring oceanic currents, they move from one place to another, the kind of displacement they go through,” Jyoti says.

Threads of continuity

One of the most personal works in the series reimagines Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. Instead of the Biblical figures gathered around the table, Jyoti brings together the craftspeople she has worked with over the years, including block printers, dyers, embroiderers and others involved in textile production. The work becomes a space to consider how artisans can carry their inherited knowledge forward as their circumstances change.

It also reflects her longstanding relationship with the Ajrakh artisans of Kutch, Gujarat, with whom she has collaborated for more than two decades. She works with traditional wooden printing blocks, some of which she dates to 300-400 years ago, preserving samples in an archive for future projects.

Khadi, too, is central to her work. Its association with Gandhi and self-reliance informs her approach to textiles, which she sees as a means of connecting historical struggles with contemporary concerns. “There is no point in talking about history if there is no contemporary relevance to it,” says the 70-year-old artist.

The journey with indigo has also been an emotional one for the artist. She recalls speaking to people in Chicago while her earlier exhibition was on view. Some spoke of family histories connected to indigo and displacement, prompting her to look more closely at the human experiences behind the trade. For Jyoti, the project remains an ongoing inquiry. “The story doesn’t conclude,” she says.

On view at Bikaner House, till November 1, 11 am to 7pm

This article is written by Adithi Reena Ajith

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