The Blue Gold – 1 | 2025

Medium: Indigo pigment dye on cotton and linen cloth pieces

Dimensions: 156 x 102 inch

Deptford’s (London) historic Royal Docks carry within their soil the layered histories of colonialism, where materials like indigo, spices, and human lives were traded as commodities by the East India Company, which later shifted to the docks at Blackwall in East London. This installation traces those colonial material histories through the story of indigo – a blue dye that was sacred to South Asian cultures before being violently exploited by colonial powers. The textile collage traces those routes and sites of violence and their presence in the current London docklands. The images are derived from archival and library research on the indigo trade in London. The work was created in the studios built on the site of former dockyards and later a former propeller factory that manufactured propellers for ships, the ones for the East India Company, and it’s also located near the docks where the East India Company would initially store the indigo along with other commodities from South Asia.