Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina presents their latest exhibition titled Indigo

Event: Indigo: New works by Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina, an exhibition of around forty new works in mediums like hand embroidery on khadi, acrylic on fabric, hand stenciled Sanskrit calligraphy and textile embroidery on canvas by Indian artist Shelly Jyoti and USA-based artist Laura Kina. The exhibition is on from December 23, 2009 to December 28, 2009 at Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre New Delhi. Time: 11 am-7pm.


While the preview of the exhibition was held at Red Earth Gallery, Vadodara, Gujarat on December 15-16, 2009, it would also be displayed at Nehru Art Centre, Mumbai from January 12, 2010 to January 18, 2010.


Shelly Jyoti and Laura Kina 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, Shelly Jyoti’s Indigo Narratives utilize traditional embroidery and embellishments 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.


Shelly Jyoti, a visual artist, independent curator, fashion designer, poet and researcher, lives and works in Vadodara, India. She is trained in fashion design and clothing technology at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi and has completed her Masters degree in English Literature from Punjab University in Chandigarh.


Her writings and paintings have been published internationally. Her works are in collection with Sahitya Akademi, the journal of Indian English literature. She is an advisory board member of Disha, a non-profit organizations dedicated to helping children with autism, and Socleen, a non-profit environmental organization.


Laura Kina is an artist and scholar living in Chicago, IL. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design, Vincent de Paul Professor, and Director of Asian American Studies at DePaul University. She earned her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a 2009-2010 DePaul University Humanities Fellow. Her Devon Avenue Sampler series is funded in part by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and a University Research Council Grant from DePaul University.


The exhibition is a must-see as it throws light on the history of indigo, from its torrid colonial past in India to the indigo-dyed Japanese folk kasuri fabrics, from boro patchwork quilts and the working class blue jeans in the United States to the blue threads of a Jewish prayer tallis!

Gallery Espace presented a mega art event on “Magic Realism” as its 20th Year Celebration at Lalit Kala Akademi

New Delhi, December 19: GALLERY ESPACE recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with an international art exhibition of unprecedented scale titled ‘LO REAL MARAVILLOSO: MARVELOUS REALITY’ 2009 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi. The exhibition was based on the theme of “magic realism” and inspired from sources as diverse as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Laura Esquivel, Salman Rushdie, Joanne Harrism, Mikhail Bulgakov, Milan Kundera and Louis de Bernieres; and included in its gamut video art, drawings, paintings, photography, site-specific installations and sculptures by 36 artists from across the globe.

Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace said: “Since the time the gallery started in 1989, our USP has always been to put together highly specialized, medium based shows. Time and again, Espace has cut across boundaries by exhibiting works of different nationalities, genders and cultures. Espace has always treaded the unconventional path and introduced to the Indian art market new genres like sculptures and drawings when they were relatively unknown mediums. It is apt, therefore, that Magic Realism is the theme of our 20th anniversary show and I am excited to show such a wide array of disciplines all under one roof.”


The gallery began working on the show way back in early 2007 when it touched base with the artists worldwide “whose art practices and sensibilities would respond and react to the theme”. The show includes works of 36 artists amongst whom are internationally acclaimed names like Anila Rubiku from Albania, Sutapa Biswas from United Kingdom, Rina Banerjee from New York, Bharti Kher, Ranbir Kaleka, Chintan Upadhyay, Jagannath Panda, Manjunath Kamath and Shilpa Gupta among others.

The show was designed by Mark Prime who made a special created ambience where one came face-to-face with Waswo X Waswo’s hand-made Krishna image or a huge tree sculpture by Chintan Upadhyay which ws suspended from the ceiling. Manjunath Kamath’s life-size fire glass automobile wrenching white rabbits into exhaust fumes shared ceiling space with Chintan’s work while Shilpa Gupta’s video allowed you to interact with images in the video while performance artist Nikhil Chopra’s ghost images make one wonder if there are any boundaries between the real and the fantastic.



Present on the occasion were Renu Modi (Director, Gallery Espace), Rajiv and Ruhi Savara (The Savara Foundation of Arts), Italian Ambassador Roberto Toscano with wife Francesca, theatre personality Sita Raina, socialite Kalyani Chawla, Kuchipudi danseuse Rashmi Vaidialingam, gallerists Ashish Anand (Delhi Art Gallery), Peter Nagy (Nature Morte), Tunty Chauhan (Gallery Threshold), Sunaina Anand (Art Alive Gallery), curator Ina Puri, Aruna Vasudev, cultural impressario Rajeev Sethi, artists Amit Ambalal, Bandeep Singh, Barbara Ellmerer, Bharti Kher with husband Subodh Gupta, Ebenezer Sunder Singh, Gigi Scaria, G.R. Iranna with wife Pooja, Ishan Tankha, Jagannath Panda, Manjunath Kamath, Maxine Henryson, Pushpamala N, Ranbir Kaleka, Sheba Chhachhi, Sonia Mehra Chawla, Tanmoy Samanta, Waswo X. Waswo, Satish Gujral with wife Kiran, Manu Parekh with wife Madhvi, Veer Munshi, Harshvardhan, Gopi Gajwani, Maithali Parekh, Rajendra Tiku, Mithu Sen, Alka Raghuvanshi, George Martin, Ravi Aggarwal, Kanchan Chander and Shamshad Hussain.