Mixed Race Studies

INDIGO: An Exhibit of Textiles

Gandhi Memorial Center
4748 Western Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland, 20816
Washington, D.C.
Phone: 301-320-6871

Opening Reception:
Saturday, 2013-11-16, 14:00-16:00 EST (Local Time)
Inaugural Remarks at 14:30 EST

INDIGO, an exhibition of textiles by Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti will be inaugurated at the Gandhi Memorial Center in cooperation with the Embassy of India and with support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations on November 16th at the Gandhi Memorial Center, from 2pm to 4pm. Mr. Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Deputy Chief of Mission, will be the distinguished guest for the afternoon. The exhibition features Laura Kina’s “Devon Avenue Sampler” and Shelly Jyoti’s “Indigo Narratives”.  The common thread between both bodies of work is the color indigo blue from India’s colonial past, to indigo-dyed Japanese kasuri fabrics and boro patchwork quilts, through blue threads of a Jewish prayer tallis, to working class blue jeans in the U.S.  Since 2009, “Indigo” has exhibited in galleries and cultural centers in Baroda, New Delhi, Mumbai, Seattle, Miami, and Chicago.

For more information, click here.

Indigo: Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina

Curated by Greg Lunceford and Lanny Silverman
2013-01-26 through 2013-04-27

Opening Reception: Friday, 2013-01-25, 17:30-19:30 CST (Local Time)
Chicago Cultural Center
The Chicago Rooms
78 E. Washington Street
Chicago, Illinois 60638

Shelly Jyoti, Visual Artist, Fashion Designer, Poet, Researcher and Independent Curator

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

Employing fair trade artisans from women’s collectives in India and executing their works in indigo blue, Indian artist Shelly Jyoti and US artist Laura Kina’s works draw upon India’s history, narratives of immigration and transnational economic interchanges.

Artist talk with Shelly Jyoti, Laura Kina, and Pushipika Frietas, President of MarketPlace: Handwork of India
The Chicago Rooms
Thursday, 2013-01-31 12:15 CST (Local Time)

• View the exhibition catalog online.
• Download a PDF of the brochure Indigo: Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina Chicago Cultural Center.
• Watch the 2010 video on youtube Indigo: New works by Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina.
• View opening night and installation photographs.

INDIGO – Laura Kina & Shelly Jyoti

Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts
2043 North Miami Avenue
Miami, Florida 33127
2011-05-14 through 2011-06-30

Opening Reception
2011-05-14, 14:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

Shelly Jyoti, Visual Artist, Fashion Designer, Poet, Researcher and Independent Curator

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, Jyoti and Kina’s works draw upon India’s history, narratives of immigration and transnational economic interchanges. The artists decided to collaborate in 2008-2009, considering their mutual interest in textile history, pattern & decoration. They began by thinking about the intersections of their own ethnic and national positions in relation to fabrics. For this exhibition in particular, Jyoti’s Indigo Narratives utilize traditional embroidery and embellishments along with heritage symbols belonging to traveling ethnic communities who settled in coastal Gujarat while Kina’s Devon Avenue Sampler series focuses on a contemporary Desi/Jewish community in Chicago.  This exhibition includes new works in mediums such as hand-embroidery on khadi, acrylic on fabric, hand-stenciled Sanskrit calligraphy and textile embroidery on canvas.

For more information, click here.