Cotton Crown
2023, screen print on cotton, bamboo, jute string
80cm x 60cm
I've finally come up with a hanging solution that I think works for an artwork I started to create over a year ago, honouring my Punjabi, Sikh, and farming roots - titled 'Cotton Crown'.
This project combines traditional Indian fabric - this time 'parna' turban fabric. A robust utility cotton, printed in gingham, that is used by labourers and more specifically farmers.
It is embellished with Gurmukhi/Punjabi script taken from the Guru Granth Sahib (Sikh holy scriptures), and loosely translates to:
Air the Teacher
Water the Father
Earth the almighty Mother
It has been finished using all natural materials: bamboo, cotton thread, and jute twine.
This piece was inspired by the farmers protests in India (2020-2021). And seeks to represent the spirituality and reverence with which land is tended to and cared for. This is done through the use of sacred text, printed into the humblest of fabrics, used in the most profound of acts - creating and sustaining life, through the planting, growing and harvesting of food.
By bestowing the fabric with words from the most sacred of Sikh scriptures, I convey the humble fabric as a crown, and the men that wear it in their duty to Mother Earth, as the truest of Kings.
I will forever be indebted to my ancestors, and the wisdom my grandparents passed down to me through their relationship with their (now our) land.
I've seen how hard they worked, with so much love and tenderness, never complaining. Loving the soil and its harvest as if it were both their mother and their child.
Their relationship with the land has always been one of great reverence and deep spirituality. The energy of which I hope is communicated in some way through this piece of work.
The top photo shows my dad modelling the fabric as a turban, much more neatly and much less sweaty than if he were actually on a farm doing the work