Weavers Studio Resource Centre’s ongoing Textile Talks series, which delves into textile and cultural history through a variety of interdisciplinary lectures, presentations, and performances, hosted artist, educator, curator, and art writer Paula Sengupta last Saturday for a presentation. Titled ‘A River of Unrest… a Delta of Dreams’, Sengupta through her work took the audience on a captivating artistic journey, blurring the lines of fact and fiction to tell the story of Awadh’s last nawab, Wajid Ali Shah, and his fragile destiny during the later years of his life.
With silk as her canvas, creatively employing batik and Shibori techniques, Paula’s work intertwines storytelling with embroidery and applique, creating a rich tapestry of narrative, history, landscape, and textile artistry. Through this project, she also examines themes of gender binaries and the loss of heritage, areas she specialises in among others.
Paula opened her talk by highlighting her own attire from Jakarta and the evolving work of batik in Indonesia, which served as inspiration for the textile panels she created for this series along with young artists and students. Her artistic vision forms a thoughtful link between the last Nawab of Awadh, portrayed as a tragic hero with ambiguous sexuality, and the eternal Great Banyan Tree.
She shared her post-pandemic experience visiting the Great Banyan, a timeless entity that embodies resilience. Not far from its roots lies the site of Wajid Ali Shah’s exiled court in Calcutta, established after his dethronement by the British. This exploration culminated in three remarkable artistic panels, each around 5.5ft tall. These pieces depict the mythical white lotus of the Himalayas, represent the decapitated trunk of the banyan tree adorned with a hibiscus, along with various birds and beasts.
Throughout her exploration, Paula chronicled Shah’s journey, from his unfathomable arrival at the Bichali ghat to his brief stay at the BNR House, a property of the Southeastern Railway, and ultimately to his final days in Metiabruz. Utilising distressed batik on silk as a metaphor for the weight of time on the Nawab's fate, alongside handkerchief-sized Dhaka muslin beautifully showcasing white-on-white embroidery reminiscent of the famed Awadhi chikankari, Paula’s artistic expressions deftly wove together narratives from different locations, deeply engaging the audience.
Complementing her textile work was her animated film, which further illustrated the complexity of the Nawab's destiny. Paula’s artistic narrative captures not only the essence of the Nawab but also anecdotes, such as the time his tiger, who stayed alongside a host of exotic animals in his menagerie, daringly escaped its confines while he was trapped by the constraints of his own fate.
The central part of her panels beautifully illustrates the Nawab's built history through intricate applique and embroidery, while the periphery showcases the roots of the Great Banyan in each piece. The appliques that she employed carry their own stories, drawn from found textiles, layered with personal significance.
Her panels not only reflect reality but also juxtapose it with the Nawab’s imaginative flights, as captured in his poetry. He envisioned a grand procession departing from Awadh, led by animals, with soldiers, musicians, and dancers trailing behind. To deepen the emotional resonance of her work, Paula accompanied the display with Wajid Ali Shah's renowned thumri Babul mora playing softly in the background.
The Nawab’s journey portrayed in the panels is surrounded by animal motifs created through applique and embroidery, featuring both extinct species like rhinos and living ones like crocodiles. Other representations include zebras, hippopotamus, giraffes, and lions, with the Great Banyan steadfastly witnessing the passage of time in each panel. Her intricately woven narrative comes full circle by the end, captivating the guests with her artistic interpretation of a slice of Indian history, centred in Bengal, through batik.