https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2022/feb/16/intricacies-of-indigo-2420034.html

Blue is one of nature’s most highly revered colours. For Hansika Sharma it is a colour that she is always drawn back to. Unsurprising as blue has the power to immerse, transport and reflect who we are: it speaks a universal language. The bluest skies and the bluest oceans remain beyond our reach. Blue has a timeless and captivating quality and this colour with its infinite variety of shades has beguiled artists and craftspeople for centuries.

Perhaps its best known use has been in textiles, derived from the humble leaves of the indigo plant. The word itself literally means ‘a substance from India’, coined by the Graeco-Roman world but also known in Sanskrit as nila eventually giving rise to the word aniline, so called as it was the first dye to be chemically produced.[1] Indeed, indigo has been so highly prized for millennia across countries far and wide, religions and cultures, that for many it holds a spiritual quality. Also known for its protective, medicinal and healing properties, this humble plant can equally be traced back to troubled and dark histories of empire, exploitation, tyranny and poverty.[2] As a result, indigo as a colour unlocks and connects us across time and space.

For Hansika these rich layers of indigo allow her to transcend to a meditative zone. Choosing her hand-dyed canvases intuitively, they set the stage for the delicate interventions of her pen, needle and brush. In the Self Portrait series, we see a drama of textures. From the hypnotic regularity of white grid-like patterns to repetitive straight stitches, there seems to be an unconscious yet striking similarity to designs made from bandhani and kantha techniques. Time-honoured traditions associated with the way we dress and furnish our homes.

Whether it is with ink or indigo, soaking and preparing each sheet of paper or canvas is an integral part of each artwork as are the motifs. Each blue background is unique, allowing chance to take its course in the way the colour becomes diluted, seeping into the fibres. Yet with each carefully pierced stitch and mark, there appears to be an intense concentrated quality, with repetitive gestures quietly bouncing and punching the surface. Like scars or a swarming mass, the thread marks map the artist’s young life to date, tracing her life and work across several states of India, peppered with a huge range of experiences, trauma and memories.

Every work we encounter reveals a transcendental terrain, transporting us beyond the surface of our everyday lives.

Uthra Rajgopal 

Artist Note

Hansika Sharma is a Textile Artist whose central concerns are informed by the
philosophy of self reflection. Hansika has developed a connection with the colour Indigo as a colour of her soul, drawing similarities with the History of Indigo that changed the world and politics in a way, as well as its personal mysterious chemical nature of getting alchemised from green to the deepest darkest beautiful form of blue. The character of the colour Indigo that can range from being a depressive dark energy to the most soothing beautiful energy relates to the Artist’s personal history and challenges with fighting melancholy and finding her balance .
Hansika’s work further explores and responds to constant personal evolution, changing philosophies & the complexity of human psychology.
The patterns and forms of her work has recently evolved to organic free flowing forms resembling the roots and the nervous system since 2020. This change has added a layer of personal inquiry in her work, which wonders and questions the mystery of the rooted roots of tall trees, the human spine and nervous system, that carries life, strength and something supernatural, all unwinding as the ultimate self awareness and alignment with the universe and beyond.
Hansika is currently working on a series of work ranging from a very small size artworks to large scale tapestries with different fabrics dyed in shades of Indigo.

This is an online exhibition