kaziranga
Guided and Art directed
by Ram Sinam
for Lab Nilaya by Asian Paints
Drawing inspiration from the diverse wildlife reserves of India, this project was commissioned to contribute to a collection of wall coverings for Nilaya by Asian Paints, with art direction by Wari Watai.
Five designs capture the beauty of one of India’s great ecosystems – the vast Kaziranga plains. Restyling traditional tactile printing techniques, the collection bursts with colour, rich texture, and emotion- of ibis in flight, delicate royna leaves, rhinos and bison. With every sunrise, this collection opens spaces to the untamed beauty of earth, sky, the wild world, and the maker's hand.
PROCESS
While studying the book Trade Temple and Court: Indian Textiles from the Tapi Collection - I cam across some beautiful block-printed fabrics made in Gujaratin the 14th Century and traded to Sulawesi, eastern Indonesia.
Cloth was then exported to all parts of the Indian ocean to be used as dress. The Tapi collection brings together some of the most remarkable historical Indian Trade textiles.
This particular set of fabrics is the ceremonial maa', an heirloom cotton textile, block-printed with red dye, hand-painted with resist, and then dyed in an indigo vat. Using just two colors and clever overlaps, the design comes alive with light and shadow, depth and movement. Inspired by this technique, I have attempted to capture a similar effect by using two colours and overlapping them to evoke the same sense of dynamism and contrast.
PROCESS
Block or screen printing with water-based pigments creates a translucency that allows for color interaction, resulting in the creation of a third color. We experimented with a range of hues drawn from the region's palette to observe which combinations produced the most intriguing results when overlapped.
This approach was applied to hand-drawn, bold yet simple compositions of native foliage to create custom fit, non-repeating wall murals - balancing background and foreground, texture, colour and pattern to create immersive environments.
