A large vat of indigo forms the (literal) beating heart of Blue Futures: Reimagining Indigo, the exhibition currently underway at Hampi Art Labs in Karnataka. “That vat, which we set up in October last year, is the most important aspect of our exhibition,” says Meera Curam, director of Hampi Art Labs and curator of the show. “It’s a living vat with healthy microbes—bacteria and fungus—working with a mix of indigo powder, henna leaves, jaggery, limestone and water. We check it every day to see if it needs a little more jaggery, limestone or heat.”
As a textile scholar who has worked extensively with indigo, Curam was clear that a functioning vat had to be part of the experience. “If you visit an indigo practitioner, you’ll always find a vat. Some keep it just for display, but others nurture it for years—sometimes as long as two decades. You can tell if a vat is alive simply by its smell and taste. I wanted visitors to encounter that tactile reality.”
When she began curating the show, Curam was sure of one more thing: “I didn’t want to do just a textile exhibition.” For most people, indigo is synonymous with cloth dyeing, but she wanted to expand that association and present indigo as a material with wider creative possibilities. In her curatorial note, she writes, “This exhibition considers indigo a living archive of gestures, where different traditions and techniques come together in an experiential, sensorial, and tactile confluence. It showcases the evolution of indigo through resist-dyed, painted, and printed textiles from Japan, Africa, and India, alongside experimental indigo works spanning past practices, contemporary art, craft, design, and fashion—highlighting the interconnected stories indigo carries.
A MIXED MEDIA SHOWCASE
As you walk around the exhibition, this expanded story reveals itself. Indigo-dyed textile experiments by multidisciplinary artist Aboubakar Fofana and Shibori tapestries by Japanese studio Slow Fabric sit alongside handwoven garments in natural indigo from Bappaditya Biswas’ 2024 New Horizons: Weftscapes collection, and Manish Nai’s 2018 untitled installation of compressed natural indigo on jute cloth and wood—a comment on fast fashion and textile waste.
Curam also commissioned Ajit Kumar Das to create Neel Basanta, a 48×48-inch Kalamkari work painted using natural indigo pigments. Other inventive pieces such as ceramic artist Upendra Ram’s stoneware sculptures, titled Roop Katha, and Vyom Mehta’s Attempt 1, made from indigo-anodized aluminium wires—were loaned from the Indigo Art Museum in Ahmedabad.
“I chose works that use indigo in never-imagined ways,” says Curam, who adds that all it took for her to get most of the artists to participate in the exhibition was reaching out to them on Instagram. “You won’t believe it, but I contacted Aboubakar, the Japanese studios and even the Indigo Art Museum’s creative director on Instagram. Everybody responded,” she laughs.
For Kavin Mehta, artist and creative director of the Indigo Art Museum—founded in 2019 as an institution dedicated solely to indigo—collaborating with Hampi Art Labs felt natural. “When they reached out saying that they were doing an exhibition, we were excited because it showed that indigo was taking the stage at a much bigger level,” says Mehta who is also showing two sandstone-and-indigo installations. An architect exploring the intersection of art, design and material processes, he has been working with indigo for a decade. Listening to him talk about the natural dye opens one’s eyes to the magic of the pigment that used to be referred to as ‘blue gold’ because of the high value it commanded in ancient times.
THE MAGIC OF INDIGO
For Curam, the magic lies in the fact that “indigo is the only natural blue, and referencing the vat, the only living colour.” She still finds it fascinating that the liquid in the vat appears green and only turns blue when exposed to oxygen. “It is an aspect that continues to amaze me to this day,” she says.
“There’s a certain depth to the colour that’s hard to put into words,” adds Mehta. “For 6,000 years, indigo has been present in almost every civilization, which explains its shared history with us,” explains Mehta who feels that synthetic indigo that emerged in the past 100 years has taken the sheen off it. That’s why institutions like the museum, or exhibitions like Blue Futures, are needed to spotlight it. “There’s so much uniqueness in the pigment that still deserves a stage,” he says before citing experiments that have been done—and are ongoing—at the museum that range from paintings and sculptures to product design and fashion.
“In our initial showcase in 2019, we had done a rug in consultation with fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani. We did it to see how wool and silk would work with indigo dyes.” Today, the institute has a lot of product designers reaching out to them owing to their work of marrying indigo with newer materials besides textiles. “We have product designers who want to consult us to see how they can work with indigo and wood or different substrates. Working with designers is something that we plan to do more of in the future,” Mehta shares.
A COMMUNITY OF INDIGO LOVERS
Despite synthetic indigo’s dominance in fast fashion, a small, passionate community of dyers, designers and artists around the world continues to keep the natural colour alive. “I’m seeing young practitioners in India and Japan continuing traditional indigo cultivation and dyeing. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, I know fourth- and sixth-generation artisans and farmers taking up the practice,” says Curam. “What I really love is that these youngsters, especially the Japanese, are so open to sharing their knowledge. At a recent Japanese resist-dyeing workshop by (Tokushima, Japan-based indigo farming and dyeing label) BUAISOU, the team brought down materials from their studio and taught participants their indigenous techniques,” she adds.
Mehta, too, sees rising interest among young fashion and design students. “A lot of small fashion firms are switching to natural indigo, and consequently, are working with natural indigo dyers. It has inspired us to plan an initiative where we'll reach out to colleges to introduce students, especially in fashion and art, to the possibilities of indigo that go beyond clothes.”
At Hampi Art Labs, workshops on resist-dyeing, block printing and other techniques have been drawing enthusiastic crowds. “People are coming specifically to interact with artisans,” says Curam. “A community is forming, and that’s lovely to see.”
The exhibition closes towards the end of January, but Curam hopes to take it to other places. And yes, she does intend to keep that vat alive. “It’s large and can be sustained for 10–12 years. Since we cultivate and extract indigo on a small plot at the JSW Foundation, I want to transfer my knowledge of dyeing to a small team of women who work with me,” she says. “This is why I want to keep that vat alive as a continuation of this whole exhibition.”
And so the magic of indigo endures.