The Intoxication of the Flower, the Exhaustion of the Labor, the Circulation of the Seas, and the Seduction of the Stitch
In the late 1700s the ships of Parsi merchants began returning to Bombay, India, from Canton, China, with recently emptied opium chests full of richly embroidered silks. These elaborate foreign textiles, adorned with unmistakable Chinese motifs of bats, peonies, moths, and cranes, were quickly embraced by Indians, ultimately becoming an iconic type of saree known as the Parsi gara. While these unique embroidered garments continue to be valued and celebrated today for pushing against notions of tradition and culture as bound by borders, we seem to have tucked away into the pleats and folds of the gara the painful histories of exploitation wrapped up in their creation.
Created with Ashdeen Lilaowala
2023 - 2025
Silk thread, handwoven raw silk, reactive dye
44 x 216 inches
Made as a garment, map, historical archive, and embroidery sampler, this saree tells the story of Parsi gara, a style of saree which emerged specifically through the opium trade. While the gara with its distinct Indo-Chinese style of embroidery remains popular today, its cosmopolitan origins and entanglement with a deeply impactful and ruinous history are rarely discussed.
Referencing trade routes, colonial paintings, family photographs, and a wide collection of gara embroidery, this work is a visual compendium of the complex social, geographical, economic, and political histories embedded in the lustrous silks and minute stitches of these historic garments.
The Intoxication of the Flower, the Exhaustion of the Labor, and the Seduction of the Sea
The earliest Parsi garas, dating back to the late 1700s, were largely made by cutting, joining, and rearranging traditional Chinese narrow-width silks, shawls, throws, furnishing textiles, and wall hangings carried from Canton by Parsi merchants for their wives in Bombay. Given the aesthetic, monetary, and cultural significance of gara, both then and now it is common practice to carefully cut and transfer portions from older and worn-out pieces onto fresh yardage to create new sarees or turn them into tops, trousers, or other accessories.
This triptych of stitched collages draws on this history of piecing together and repurposing existing material. Comprising archival maps, paintings, drawings, and samplers as both research and raw material, these pieces weave in the tragic context of colonial botanical sciences, forced agricultural labor, and politically strategized modes of spreading addiction in both India and China to highlight how they contributed to the birth of the beautiful and coveted form of embroidery we see in Parsi garas.
The Intoxication of the Flower // 2023
Parsi-gara embroidery samples, antique maps of trade routes between London, India & China, 19th century botanical illustrations of Papaver somniferum, image transfers, and thread on linen paper
30 x 44.75 x 2.25 inches
The Exhaustion of the Labor // 2023
Dried papaver somniferum, Parsi-gara embroidery samples, illustrations of opium production in colonial India on habutai silk, illustrations of opium smokers in 19th century China on silk organza, image transfers, and thread on linen paper
30 x 44.75 x 2.25 inches
The Seduction of the Sea // 2023
Parsi-gara embroidery border, Parsi-gara embroidery sample, oil on found photograph, image transfers, and thread on linen paper
30 x 44.75 x 2.25 inches
The museumization of a garment, especially one belonging to a marginalized or minority culture, even if well intentioned can easily perpetuate a violent cycle of objectification. As artifacts are distanced from their embedded practices in museums, their physicality tends to be prioritized over the embodied reality of their makers and users.. This video offers an alternative glimpse into the history mapped onto the saree, as the viewer is invited to follow the patterns, borders, and trade routes now wrapped, tied, pleated, and draped around the body of the artist. By presenting the exhibited piece as worn, this short video reminds us of the Parsi gara’s essential relationship with the body, thereby providing crucial context for knowing the gara – and situating the adorned body itself in a complex socio-political history.
The saree here is draped in the nivi style, now widely considered to be the standard and most universal way of wearing sarees across India and the world. This drape is said to have been invented in the 1860s by Jnanadanandini Tagore after she moved to Bombay and was heavily inspired by the way Parsi women wore their signature Chinese embroidered silks. Thus, it can be said that garas have in fact impacted the way in which all sarees are worn today.
(How) To Wear a Gara, Nivi Drape
2025
HD Video
2 minutes 20 seconds