Prompted by Amitav Ghosh's “The Nutmeg Curse’ spice plants like Peppercorn, Cinnamon, Clove, Nutmeg and Turmeric collide in Dark Hairy Roots - a tapestry, weaving the interconnectivity of plants, faith and human hands as one epic force; one that will always confuse and flatten the colonial fantasy of commodify and capitalise. Drawn in connection to each other like capillaries pumping life around; turmeric and madder roots root down their stems that bloom the flowers of cinnamon and nutmeg that grow high into vines of peppercorn that entangle all around. The paintings are held down by thick Khadi weaves - the original anti-colonial hand-spun cotton that helped to eventually ‘decolonise’ India - an antidote to the pace of capitalist and machine supremacy. I collaborated with embroiders in Jaipur to create a tapestery made from Khadi (hand-spun cotton) dyed with iron, turmeric, cinnamon and nutmeg ground into dye baths with cutch, maridold and madder roots symbolic of the intersections that both spice and cloth had on british colonial thirst and western taste. Brass spice boxes etched with spices are shown alongside.

The drawings are inspired by collections of botanical illustrations done by Indian Islamic painters that made up most of the horticulture archive in the UK between the 17th -20th century.
Hand-crafted spice boxes, with botanical etchings and casted spices, adorn the inside accompany the piece illustrating the legendary value of spice against gold and mystically symbolic with their ability to colour food gold considered nourishing, said to be endued with the vitality of the sun.


Shown at Khari Bouli market in Old Delhi - the biggest spice market in the world.