An avid gardener, Arunima Choudhury’s passion for nature has defined much of her oeuvre. In her current solo show at Emami Art in Kolkata, the 75-year-old artist has conjured a botanical dream of a lifetime. Aptly titled Aranyaka—Sanskrit for ‘belonging to the wilderness’—the exhibition is a heartfelt homage to the forests and tea estates of Choudhury’s childhood in the hills of North Bengal. Executed predominantly on rice paper and cotton fabric scrolls, nature assumes the role of both subject and medium.
Choudhury is no stranger to artistic experiments, having embraced a diversity of materials and media through the decades, including acrylic, enamel, ceramics, embroidery, textile art and vegetable dyes on handmade paper. She was first introduced to natural dyes and eco-printing around 2006 at Patha Bhavan in Kolkata, where she once served as an art and craft teacher. During the pandemic, she found herself rediscovering this organic technique and the creative results of these experiments form the cornerstone of Aranyaka. “I transfer the shapes and impressions of leaves directly onto the paper or cloth,” Choudhury explains. Born in Siliguri in 1950, the artist inherited a love for horticulture from her late mother. “My mother had planted a sapling of Kamini flowers in our garden. It has become a big plant now with dark green leaves and cuticles. During the monsoon, it blossoms with white flowers. I feel it is my mother’s blessing,” muses Choudhury.
Admittedly, there’s something charmingly old-fashioned about her creative process. In the age of 3D printing, Choudhury finds joy in the simplicity of eco-printing. Where most contemporary artists rely on industrially-produced pigments, here’s a woman who produces her own natural colours, often derived from organic sources. Unlike her last major retrospective—the Nancy Adajania-curated The Dark Edge of Green at Emami Art in 2022—which was more autobiographical in nature, Aranyaka is a plea for environmental crisis and loss of biodiversity. “Aranyaka is more concerned with the artist’s outward, social self than her inner, psychological one,” remarks Richa Agarwal, CEO, Emami Art.