To Be So Black and Blue

To Be So Black and Blue is a series of works which re-imagine various Hindu deities who are traditionally depicted in South Asian paintings and manuscripts as blue skinned, but are clearly described in the text as being black skinned. The divine and mythological characters are embodied by contemporary Black people, who are friends of the artist, and are constructed using indigo in dye and paint forms on meticulously handwoven quilts made of layers of old, used clothing. The works make connections around both the oppressive histories of indigo production, as well as the nuances of colorism and anti-blackness which have manifested themselves within dark-skinned peoples, while simultaneously offering an alternative location for empowerment and elevation that is independent of Western aesthetic and cultural traditions.

शान्ताकारं भुजगशयनं पद्मनाभं सुरेशं
विश्वाधारं गगनसदृशं मेघवर्णं शुभाङ्गम् ।

I adore Vishnu,
Who has a serene appearance,
Who is lying on a serpent,
Who has a lotus emerging from his navel,
Who is the lord of the gods

Who sustains the universe,
Who is boundless and infinite like the sky,
Who is colored blue like a water-laden cloud,
Who has a graceful body.

To Be So Black and Blue (Dominic as Neela Madhava) // 2021

Used clothing, thread, oil, indigofera suffruticosa, and verses from Vishnu Purana

61 x 74 inches

কালো মেয়ের পায়ের তলায়
দেখে যা আলোর নাচন।

সিন্ধুতে মার বিন্দু খানিক
ঠিকরে পড়ে, রূপের মাণিক,
বিশ্বে মায়ের রূপে ধরে না
মা আমার তাই দিগ্বসন।

কালো মেয়ের পায়ের তলায়
দেখে যা আলোর নাচন।

Under the Black Girl’s feet,
Come see how the light flickers
and frolics.

A drop of her jewel-like beauty
glints in that shoreless deep blue
sea.
Her limitless splendor the world
can’t contain.
So my mother is stark naked,
covered by just the sky.

Under the Black Girl’s feet,
Come see how the light flickers
and frolics.

To Be So Black and Blue (Iman as Kali) // 2019 - 2021
Used clothing, thread, oil, persicaria tinctoria, and verses from Mahabharata
86.5 x 62 inches

साँवरे रंग राची राणा जी हूँ तो
बाँध घुँघरा प्रेम का हूँ तो
हरि के आगे नाची
साँवरे रंग राची

एक निरखत एक परखत है
एक करत मोरी हासी
और लोग म्हाअरी काईं करे सी
हूँ तो हरि जी प्रभु जी की दासी
साँवरे रंग राची

I’m colored with the color of dusk,
oh rana,
Colored with the color of my Lord.
I danced in the presence of the saints,
Colored with the color of my Lord.

They thought me mad for the
Maddening One,
Raw for my dear dark love,
Colored with the color of my Lord.

To Be So Black and Blue (Chiffon as Shyama Sundara) // 2021
Used clothing, thread, oil, indigofera guatamalensis, peacock feathers, and song by Mira-bai
83 x 54 inches

“The Duke Ellington jazz standard, “Mood Indigo,” from which this exhibition takes its title proclaims; “You ain’t never been blue, till you’ve had that mood Indigo.” Indigo is often referred to as the bluest blue. This becomes an aperture through which Chakrabarti experiments with the color blue. Blue itself is abundant with irony: there is its expansive sense of freedom and nature — the color of the sky and the sea — yet the materialist production of blue (Indigo) dye is embedded in the afterlives of colonial plantations. In Yoruba cosmologies, for example, blue evokes power and royalty, while in Indian Rasa Theory, the blue-Black color, shyama, is associated with the erotic. In ancient Indian paintings and manuscripts, multiple gods and goddesses described in texts as shyama (blue Black) or krsna (Black), are rendered using Indigo. In To Be So Black and Blue (Chiffon as Shyama Sundara) (2019-2021), Chakrabarti transposes a painting of Chiffon (her friend and fellow artist) onto one of her quilts, styled in the blue hue and accoutrements (a peacock feather) of the Hindu God Krishna, also known as, Shyama Sundara, using oil paints that she has milled from Guatemalan Indigo. The name Shyama Sundara translates to “dark and beautiful," while the name Krishna means Black; what does it mean to associate his godly Blackness in Hindu art and literature with the Blackness of peoples of African descent in the Americas and beyond? Growing up as an African-American woman in a Great Migration (Georgia to Connecticut) family, Black vernacular often referred to dark-skinned Black people as “Blue-Black.” While the saying is often laced with colorism, the notion that someone can be so Black that they are blue adds another valence to Chakrabarti’s experiments with Black/American figures as Hindu gods, goddesses, and mythological figures, such as in the works To Be So Black and Blue (Iman as Kali) (2019-2021) and To Be So Black and Blue (Dominic as Neela Madhava) (2019-2021), as well. To be clear: Chakrabarti is not introducing Blackness to Hindu mythology, as the translations from Sanskrit to English are unequivocally about dark, Black skin. In a refusal to ignore the capaciousness of Blackness as a color and racial subject-position, Chakrabarti stages an intervention into a South Asian worldview where deified figures are conceptualized as Black in color while racial readings are overlooked. Confronting racial Blackness in Hinduism proposes an invigorating spiritual lens for Black-Asian connectivity.

The Black figures on Chakrabarti’s quilts are rendered in smoky, vibrant blue hues, and given African-American musical lyrics/titles in the Blues-inflected tradition of Jazz. Black Americanness, and the sentiment that “Black is Beautiful” is a global reckoning to be made, informs Chakrabarti’s excavations of alluring Indigo scenes in her own cultural heritage. This is not a case of a non-Black artist trafficking in the hyper-visibility and racial fetishism of Blackness, but instead the artwork produced out of Chakrabarti’s intimacies with Black life, Black thought, and through a rigorous study of Black and Asian solidarities and intimacies.”

— excerpt from When I Get That Mood Indigo (2021) exhibition text by Aly Thomas