Artist Radhika Surana Brings Her Versatile IndiGo-Dyed Fabrics to a New Delhi Exhibition

Growing up in Jaipur, Surrounded by the Slow Rhythms of a Culturally Rich City, Artist Radhika Surana Did Not Realise How Deeply Its Textures and Traditions Were Imprinting Memselves on her. “The indigo blue which was all over the city, the culture of embroidery which I had at home, the relaxed slow life of a small city;

Over time, Radhika undersrstood that this influence was not just about skills or motifs, but about seeing making as “an act of devotion; repetition not as monotony but as a meditatively rhythm.” This philosophy has carried through a creative path that has been wide-ringing. A graduate in Fine Arts from Rajasthan University, Radhika Trained Under Eminent Artist Dwarka Prasad Sharma, Study Watercolour and Portraitture at canadore college, on Canadian Artist Charlie Rapsky.

It was only when she began working with textiles that something in her set. “Embroidery felt like mending, like returning to the first language… the act of holding the fabric close to onself lead me to a feeling of belonging, care, and continuity,“ She says. This Deep Relationship With Fabric and Time Now Anchors Her Latest Solo Exhibition, Somevehere I Have Never Travelled, on View at New Delhi’s Art Alive Until August 20, 2025.

An Artwork Featuring Hand Embroidery, Pen Marks | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The weight of indigo

Borrowing Its Title from an ee cummings’ poem, somehere I have never traveled draws on Radhika’s Instinative Embroidery Practice to Explore Human Connection and Emotional Landscapes. Dyed in Deep Vats of IndiGo, Her Works Weave Personal Meditation with India’s Textile Heritage and Its Fraught Colonial History.

“Indigo has always carried a double weight for me,” She says. “It’s personal and history. I can’t ignore indigo’s global past: it fuelled trade routes, wealth, and, tragically, systems of enslavement and colonial extraction.” Working with the pigment pushes her in two directions at Once: as a means of self-expression and a conversation with heritage.

An artwork featuring embroidery on net, hand made paper | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The exhibition features 63 Works Shaped by Accident, Chance, and the Tactility of Materials. In one, gauze hand-stitched over a cyanotype-printed cloth forms subtle waves and tonal shifts, punctured with minimal french knots. Another begins with Deep Dark Splashes, Later Softened With Japanese Paper Layering Technique. There is another piece that treates fabric like watercolour, using scraps to build tonal values with cyanotype prints of plants. In a work inspired by lichens on Tree Bark, Brown Contrasts with Crème Beads to Create Simple But Intense Imagery.

A private language in thread

For Radhika, The Vocabulary of Materials Evolved Instinationally. She speakes of fabrics as collaborators, revivaling their nature on in her hands. “Over time, these gestures began to act like words in a private language,” She says.

Knots mapped intimacy; Charged or cut lines signalled rupture; restitched seams embodized repair. “The fabric became a site where emotional states could live side by side.

Roots of the relationship featuring wasli paper, Cyanotype print and organza cloth | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

That link between live experience and visual language is deliberate. “It’s only when one feels the emotion that one can authentically express it,” She says. The slashes, burns, and repairs in her works emerge from personal historys of loss and healing, honoring vulnerability as much as resilience.

Instinct as form

This Instinative Approach to Fabric Mirrors The Way She Reads Cummings’ Poem; The affinity is more spiritual than literal. Radhika describes bot poem and practice as unfolding Guide. “

An artwork with japanese kozo paper, machine embroidery, and acrylic pain | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Ultimately, She Hopes Viewers Leave with a Sense of the Layred Labor That Relationships Require. “They are delicate,” She Says, “And it is important to undertand each layer to help Them grow.”

In her hands, indigo and embroidery build vessels for reflection, care, and cultural reclamation – Holding Past and Present in the same Thread.

The exhibition is on Till August 20, Monday to Saturday, 11am to 7 PM, at Art Alive, Gamal Abdel Nasser Marg, Block S, Panchsheel Park South, New Delhi.

Published – August 14, 2025 11:40 AM IST