Paper titled :’THE SPLENDID TEXTILES OF INDIA: TRADE |COTTON| CLOTH’
by Shelly Jyoti
Forum on Contemporary Theory ,
XV International Conference
www.fctworld.org
Theme: “Media and Utopia: Imagination, History, Technology”
16–19 December 2012
Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh India
Video Installation and Poetry Performance
Tao Gallery and Lakeeren Gallery Mumbai
Saturday December 22, 2012
AN ODE TO NEEL DARPAN
My video installation for the Midnight Tea in Mumbai is inspired by a literary text ‘Neel Darpan’ (1860) written by Dinbandhu Mitra. I will be constructing a narrative of the play ‘Neel Darpan’ in poetry of words performing and examining the period where the indigo farmers died of hunger ,unsung and unheard . The video installation builds on my art work from ‘Indigo Narrative’ series 2009-12.”
Curatorial project 2012
‘VASTRAM : THE SPLENDID WORLD OF INDIAN TEXTILES’
Curator: SHELLY JYOTI
Project by: Indian Council of Cultural Relations
Curatorial Essay: The Splendid Indian Textiles: Cotton|Cloth|Culture
Indian textiles were a principal commodity in the trade of the pre-industrial age and were prized for their fineness in weave, brilliance in colour, rich variety in designs and a dyeing technology which achieved a fastness of colour unrivalled in the world. Indian cottons had achieved global reach by trade dominating world’s textile market during the sixteenth century. As a curator of this, I had proposed to categorise the Indian textiles in three categories of painted printed, woven-non-woven,embroidery and embellishments . Further investigated the global influences on new materials, machine spun yarn for handloom cotton and synthetic dyes for vegetable and mineral dyes .The role of Indian government after independence as how Indian textiles sustained with new techniques, technology introduction, research on documentation and yet conserving the traditions.