Radha Pandey
Norway
www.radhapandey.com
IG: @pandey.radha
Flora of Mughal India
2024
Letterpress printing, miniature painting, wood engraving, polymer plates, linoleum, paper cutting, foil stamping
10” x 6.5” x 0.75″ closed approx.
Artist Statement
Flora of Mughal India or لستان ھند (Gulistaan-e-Hind) explores the shift in perception of nature and its representation in illuminated manuscripts in India during a time of cultural and political change (1500–1700), and how that consequently changed the art of the book and the visual representation of nature on the Indian subcontinent. A collaboration between Pandey and master craftspeople in India, this book combines letterpress printing, miniature painting, paper cutting and hand-illustrated elements.
Floral portraiture in the Mughal miniature tradition was impacted by colonial interests in the commercialization of plants. (The Mughal period in India can be compared to the Renaissance). This existing aesthetic and book culture that glorified nature and beauty became secondary to the European aesthetic that focused on botany and science—a beautifully executed but targeted system for identifying and classifying plants purely for their commercial gain.
The nature of the Mughal manuscript and illumination patronized for the sheer love of plants was demolished by this European scientific botanical aesthetic created for the colonialization of plants.
The papers used in the book are traditionally-made raw hemp papers, the kind that were originally used by miniature painters in the Mughal courts, made specifically for the book by Hussain Papers (Rajasthan). Manuscripts in Mughal India would have taken up to fifteen years to complete with more than four artists working on a single image. To honour that collaborative model of the past, the base for the illustrations have been printed using wood-engraved blocks which are then painted over in intricate detail by miniature painter, Jai Prakash Lakhiwal Ji based in New Delhi.
The endpages are designed based on stone lattice work found in architecture of the Mughal period. These are embellished using gold leaf and hand cut by Ram Soni Ji (Ajmer) a the Sanjhi (paper cutting) tradition mastercraftsman.
The layouts, image, and text placement and the paper in the book all reflect and take inspiration from the Islamic manuscript tradition. These are accompanied by couplets written by poet Ashok Lall in Urdu, with transliterations in Hindi and translations in English.
The illustrated section of the book opens left to right as in an Islamic manuscript. This section is juxtaposed with the text, that section of the book opening right to left; a conversation between the two aesthetics.
Flora of Mughal India, looks critically at book history and examines whose stories we tell and how we tell them.