Known as the “King of Dyes,” “Devil’s Dye,” and “Blue Gold,” indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) in the Indian subcontinent can be traced back to 2nd millennium BCE. Shelly Jyoti’s exhibition, titled “Indigo: The Blue Gold” is a mid-career retrospective of Jyoti’s investigation into the subcontinent’s 18-19th century colonial trade of natural indigo dye. The exhibition focuses specifically on indigo’s long history from several perspectives, including global trade, forced labor, slavery, and indentured labor, migration, and colonization in terms of India’s colonial history. Exhibition contributor Barbara Hanson Forsyth explains, “Indigofera originated in Africa more than 150 million years ago and then spread to India where it was first cultivated for use as a dye.” Different varieties of true indigo (not to be confused with European woad) are grown around the world with the earliest known uses of indigo dye dating back 6,000 years ago in Peru.

The exhibition features over forty new artworks along with a selection of Jyoti’s installations, poetry, drawing, fashion, and textiles from the past decade including her signature “Indigo Narratives” series, which traveled extensively across the US and India from 2009–2018. Jyoti’s art uses recurring iconographic symbols including Gandhi’s spinning wheel, fish, and ships to tell the story of indigo. Since 2009, Jyoti, has been creating contemporary hand spun woven khadi textile works utilizing traditional indigo dye and ajrakh (Arabic: blue) reverse block printing techniques that trace back to ancient Indus Valley Civilization (3,300–1,300 BCE). Jyoti’s original textile art is produced in the studios of master craftsmen Juned Ismail Mohamed Khatri, son of the legendary Dr. Ismail Mohamed Khatri, in Ajrakhpur, Bhuj, Gujarat.

Exhibition curated by Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul Professor, The Art School, DePaul University

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Shelly Jyoti is a visual artist, fashion designer, poet, and an independent curator whose work references the cultural context of Indian history. She is trained as a fashion designer from National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, and she earned her MA in English with American Literature from Punjab University, Chandigarh.

Artist Statement

My work as an artist is centered on historical iconographic elements within the cultural context of Indian history. I explore and construct the hermeneutics of period histories, its contemporary representation of socio-political enquiry within my art practice.
With my academic background in English literature, formal training in fashion designing and clothing technology, my artworks interconnect art, design, and critical theories. I collaborate with the 9th or 10th generation of ajrakh artisans who migrated from Sindh and Balochistan in 1600 CE but still carry on with ancient textile traditions of printing and dyeing in Bhuj, Gujarat.
Invoking such traditions, I bring together khadi as a fabric, ajrakh textile traditions and skill of the craftspeople giving my own interpretation in a visual form. Working with various media and excavating from history, my art celebrates the subaltern.

Official Website

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Tags: Chicago, Near South Side, South Asia Institute