Vandana Ram paints Sydney with indigo

SYDNEY: Artists Vandana Ram’s turmeric and indigo hued mortar and pestles invoke the grinding sounds of the forgotten village home at the Indigo exhibition in the Blacktown Arts Centre in Sydney.

This is her first solo exhibition, which runs until December 2, inspired by the art and rituals of women from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India through shared traditions, stories, spices, cloth and colours. Ram conducted workshops for South Asian women at spice shops near their homes to explore the ideas of homeland, significant colours, spices and associated rituals and recipes.

“For women in particular, the local spice shop is what brings us together, physically and symbolically. Food, domestic supplies and cloth connect us in a welcoming and aromatic environment. So the imaginative space offered by ‘the spice shop’ solved the challenges put in front of us by history and politics, allowing a place to cross borders,” says Ram.

She conducted 12 workshops with 20-40 year-old housewives who had children.

“At first this was like a travelling exhibition — I went to where the women were and gave them an introductory workshop. Then I could convince them to come to the arts centre where we also provided childcare,” says Ram. 

The discussions during these workshops led to the installations that are part of the Indigo exhibition, which includes a series of mudras from Bharatanatyam on lengths of indigo dyed cloth.

“Hands are active agents of expression: for women they are hands that sew, grind, cook, and hands that speak so fluently in dance. Hands are beautiful,” says Ram. 

The indigo dye has many cultural and political associations for her.

“I experienced a magic involved in dyeing with indigo”, she says. “From an organic powder in a water bath, cloth undergoes a transformation because first it turns a murky yellow/green, and loses its colour completely. When taken out of the bath and exposed to oxygen, it’s as if it begins to breathe and slowly and mysteriously turns into a beautiful blue. Indigo became a metaphor for transformations that take place through self exploration and self definition, and to describe responses to migration.”

Many other associations with indigo came up during her discussions with South Asian women, right from the Blue Lord, Krishna, to the Neel (indigo) agitation of Bengal in 1859-60 against the British, when farmers refused to cultivate indigo instead of rice.

Ram says, “Some of the women from Bangladesh in our workshops who knew the play called Neel Darpan (The Indigo Mirror), by the Bengali writer Deen Bandhu Mitra, which in 1860, painted a pathetic picture of the atrocities inflicted upon indigo plant workers. Finally the Dramatic Performance Act was imposed by the colonisers, to suppress ‘native’ voices from speaking out against the British Raj.” 

Ram moved to Sydney when she was 11 with her parents and completed her honours in psychology. She did a little counselling before joining the Australian Council for Arts as an Arts Administrator.

She has worked as a community based artist and facilitator for 15 years and first began working with migrant and refugee communities from various countries.

About four years ago she began working with the Indian community and in 2003, Ram organised a performance based project called Suburban Masala.

Young people of Indian origin expressed the cultural clash they experienced in a humourous way. She is hoping to secure a long-term community project, for which she has filed an application.

“I want to work on a project over 3 years to build long-term relationships with the community. Indigo exhibition came together in the spirit of celebrating our shared cultural heritage and the possibility that our connections could make something entirely new.”