Exploring Indigo and Embroidery: Radhika Surana’s Debut Solo Exhibition in Delhi

Blue is Radhika Surana’s favourite colour. Walking into her solo debut exhibition ‘Somewhere I Have Never Travelled’ at Delhi’s Art Alive Gallery feels like stepping into that love—the space is awash in indigo. The title borrows from E. E. Cummings’ poem of the same name, a reflection on love, vulnerability, and the unknown. For the Gurugram artist, the show is a journey through her own idea of life, gesturing toward inner exploration—through thread and indigo-dyed works. “The poem is about relationships, which is what my work speaks to as well,” she tells TMS.

Threads Tell a Tale

Radhika Surana’s art practice is a beautiful blend of indigo vat dyeing on paper with embroidery, stitched fabric, and sometimes watercolour. She frequently uses seed stitches, which she describes as representing growth and new life. “It’s meditative, but also holds narrative,” she says. In her piece ‘Lichen’, running stitches end in loose threads, like conversations or relationships that never quite close, layered over blue colour splattered across. Another series, ‘Interactions’, combines fishnet wire, cloth, and handmade paper, stitched together onto paper, mimicking how we interact in messy, social spaces. Some fabrics are torn or scorched, others are visibly mended.

Weight of the Blue

Once dubbed ‘Blue Gold’, indigo was one of colonial India’s most lucrative exports, entangled with British exploitation and the Indigo Revolt of 1859. Surana doesn’t use indigo lightly. “It’s a form of reclamation,” she says. “A way of going back to your roots.” Used in art and dyeing traditions since the Indus Valley Civilisation, Surana honours this by embracing the labour-intensive process of traditional vat dyeing, working with a 50-litre lime-based vat made of indigo powder, lime, and tamarind. “It’s like a child,” she laughs. “Miss a stir or get the pH wrong, it gets upset and gives you dull colour.”

Embroidery: A Nod to Unseen Labour

Historically dismissed as “women’s work,” embroidery in Surana’s hands nods to often-unseen labour. “These pieces are spontaneous, yes, but they’re also a conscious nod to that history. Most textile artists have been women, and we see it through that lens,” she says. Despite working with indigo for nearly five years, she says she hasn’t exhausted its depths. “I’m not ready to move out of the blue. There’s still so much left. My work is spiritual and emotional. When I’m stitching or making these dots, each step reinforces gratitude, good feeling, and good emotion,” says Surana.