Jagdeep Raina featured in ArtsEverywhere

November 4, 2021

Threads of Solidarity: Into the Archives with Jagdeep Raina

By Curtis Walker

Guelph-based artist Jagdeep Raina’s embroidery could be described as expressive, even though it is meticulously rendered in thousands of precise stitches. His style, a skewed and complex patchwork of colours and forms, was honed in his earlier mixed media works—large, dense charcoal and pastel renderings of friends, family, and community members. Recently, Raina has found inspiration working with new forms of traditional handicrafts, specifically the art of phulkari, a type of embroidered cloth from India and Pakistan celebrated for its intricate geometric designs. “I’ve been trying to find ways to preserve this style of embroidery,” said Raina. “My grandma taught me some techniques, and I found a Pakistani woman, also passionate about trying to keep this embroidery alive, who taught me some folk-art techniques.”

Raina’s recent tapestries are inspired by what is referred to as the Green Revolution, or the Third Agricultural Revolution. In the 1960s, agricultural practices in India underwent an enormous shift as traditional methods of crop cultivation were spurned in favor of industrial farming and the introduction of genetically-modified, high-yielding variety (HYV) rice and wheat. Although it was conceived as a pioneering program to help alleviate poverty and hunger in rural India during a period of famine, the lasting impact of the Green Revolution has been widespread malnutrition and staggering losses to staple indigenous crop species, agricultural diversity, biodiversity, cultural heritage, and economic sovereignty.

“There’s been a lot of damage done from this framework,” explains Raina. Widespread soil erosion, low forest cover, the water supply drying up, and then, of course, a really devastating epidemic of farmer suicides.”

The imagery that Raina weaves into his embroidery is a tale of providence. He happened to be in London, UK in 2016 where he met writer Satinder Kaur Chohan, who had developed a touring play about the Green Revolution based on her time in Punjab. Chohan had assembled an archive of hundreds of photographs, including over 20 hours of interviews that she conducted while living with farmers. Raina purchased the archive for $500 and went to work digitizing its contents, using it as source material for paintings, tapestries, poetry, and two short films.

Phulkaris are “large embroidered cloths made by women of various social classes and religious communities in the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan prior to Partition,” though similar embroidery work can also be found in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Raina considers these works specifically to be variations on a bagh—ornate phulkaris that are completely covered in embroidery stitches. While a style of bagh does exist that represents scenes of everyday life (Sanchi bagh), Raina’s approach differs significantly from the iconic, graphic style of traditional Sanchi by opting for striking interpretations of images of the Green Revolution.

“My dream one day is to make a bagh from scratch,” says Raina, who can often be found hunched over a small table loom learning how to spin cotton and weave the fibre into cloth.

To view the full article visit ArtEverywhere

For more information about Jagdeep Raina please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com

+1.416.531.8000

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	1 year	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.

Cookie	Duration	Description
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CONSENT	16 years 9 months 23 days 2 hours	No description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	1 year	No description
_gat_gtag_UA_135534658_1	1 minute	No description