Indigo and Cloves

INDIGO AND CLOVES

This artist’s book by Radha Pandey uses dyes made from cloves and indigo to represent water and soil, "two of the oldest beings on our planet. The earth was shaped and is being shaped even today entirely by these slow-moving forces.... The earth continues to change and evolve. As we enter the anthropocene we affect change that would have taken the earth billions of years, in a fraction of the time. The processes of erosion and sedimentation are no longer a testament to time but a sign of human presence and intervention."

The lines that appear over the dyed section has been adapted from contour maps of the Himalayan range, and the cut shapes are the boundaries of the highest physical features of our planet, namely the Tibetan plateau (China, Tibet, India); the Kanza'gyal mountain range (east Asia); and the Andean mountain range (western South America). 

As Pandey explains, "the shapes cut into each leaf are staggered ever so slightly, so that when the leaves are stacked, one can see through the cavernous space created by these forms resembling a physical elevation or contour map. Depending on which way the book is read, these cut shapes appear to sediment on one side and erode on the other, with readers physically participating in these natural processes as they progress through the book."

— Written by Clara Drummond (Special Collections) 

Radha Pandey 
Deep Time 
Radha Pandey, 2017 
Purchased with funds from the J. Harvey Fahnestock Endowment for Scientific, Engineering and Rare Books, 2022