Shelly Jyoti’s indigo exhibition at Delhi’s Bikaner House

Shelly Jyoti’s **Indigo: The Blue Gold II** is on view at Bikaner House until November 1. Spanning work made between 2008 and 2026, the exhibition examines histories associated with indigo, from cultivation in India and the Champaran Satyagraha to the dye’s global movement.

Curated by Lisa Trivedi, a history professor at Hamilton College in New York, the show centres on a new work, *Indigo: Migration Through Time*. Its three movements — *Faceless Journeys*, *Displaced Ecologies* and *Unresolved Geographies* — consider enslaved, indentured and migrant workers, and the traditions communities carry into unfamiliar places.

Jyoti uses hand-spun khadi, natural indigo dyeing, Ajrakh block printing, embroidery and mirror work, collaborating with Ajrakh master artisans from Kutch. Ships, charkhas, fish, globes, faceless figures and seeds recur across the works.

The exhibition is supported by the Good Earth Heritage Foundation, with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts as knowledge partner.