Home And The World

Flowers and monsters in Paula Sengupta’s chintz works subvert colonial design while Nandini Bagla Chirimar’s architectural drawings and ephemera frame odes to the past, states Geeti Sen.

- Geeti Sen

Reviving patterns with new meaning demands a bold imagination. The drawings and etchings by Paula Sengupta in Of herbariums, hortoriums and home at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, from the 6th of December to the 12th of January, are invested with a keen awareness to subvert colonial history. In the same show, which is conceptualised by Renu Modi, works by Nandini Bagla Chirimar present mappings from memory. In very different ways they both excavate the past.

How many of us know that the English floral patterns called chintz, so popular in furnishings and fashion wear, did not originate in Europe? The English chintz was in fact derived from Hindustani cheet. It was created in India and imported by England, France and the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, so much so that in the 18th century a ban was imposed forbidding the use of imported chintz from India! Two Frenchmen, at separate times, a naval officer and a traveller, leaked the technique so that it could be made in local mills in France.