Gulistan, 2024, Gopa Trivedi, Watercolour and walnut ink on wasli. Image © Sarmaya Arts Foundation, (2024.58.1)
Beneath layers of delicate pigment and flowing walnut ink, artist Gopa Trivedi has cultivated a visual garden of meaning in her latest series, Gulistan (2024). In this conversation with Sarmaya, Trivedi guides us through the lush conceptual landscape of her work—twenty-four sets of five paintings on wasli paper, where botanical forms and rippling water patterns intertwine in traditional Charbagh layouts. Drawing nourishment from the rich soil of Persian poetry, the architectural harmony of Mughal gardens, and the analytical gaze of colonial botanical studies, Gulistan explores the urgently contemporary themes of othering, hybridity, and pluralism. Gulistan was a part of Sarmaya’s March 2025 exhibition in Mumbai, In The Dappled Light.
Read our previous interviews with Gopa Trivedi here and here.
When Gulistan was first shown at Latitude 28 in Delhi, the display was unusual. What was the idea behind this table setup, with spaces or aisles between the sets?
“Gulistan is named after a book of poems by [13th-century Persian poet] Saadi Shirazi. “The literal translation is ‘rose garden,’ but Saadi wrote this collection of poetry about the nation and its people. The term ‘Gulistan’ was also used [by 20th-century poet Muhammad Iqbal] as a metaphor for the nation of Hindustan in Saare jahan se accha. In Persian, it’s called Gulistan; in Urdu, it’s Gulsitan. The way I title my works reflects this layered approach, which I think comes from growing up in Lucknow, where Hindi literature was always present at home. The words of Maithili Sharan Gupt (poet) and Mahadevi Verma (poet and essayist) have influenced my work.”
Tell us a bit about your process researching Gulistan.
“I looked at old scientific illustrations done by artists, specifically referring to Company School. “[Company School painting] involved local Indian miniature or South Asian manuscript artists, trained in that style, adapting or looking at European watercolours. My work focuses on the idea of hybridity, where two things combine and become something entirely new. It reflects the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised and how a new language and new cultures emerge. That’s the idea I tried to encapsulate in Gulistan: how different plants arrived from various parts of the world, not always through colonisation. An example is the Krishna Kamal.”
Gulistan (Krishna Kamal), 2024, Gopa Trivedi, Watercolour and walnut ink on wasli, Image © Sarmaya Arts Foundation, (2024.58.21 (3)); Printed on recto (centre): “[Krishna Kamal] gets its name from the early missionaries in South America, who saw it in the representation of the agony of Christ on the Cross. The ten petals were the apostles who witnessed the crucifixion, the ring of filaments the crown of thorns, the five stamens the wounds, the three stigmas the nails in the cross, the tendrils the lashes of the persecutors of Christ, and the spots on the underside the thirty pieces of silver. gets its name because it is said that the entire Mahabharata is present within it.”
In Gulistan, the use of walnut ink creates a striking effect. Was there a specific reason for choosing walnut ink?
Gulistan (Fig), 2024, Gopa Trivedi, Watercolour and walnut ink on wasli, Image © Sarmaya Arts Foundation, (2024.58.8 (3); Printed on recto: “Jains don’t eat figs because of the tree’s unique pollination system, involving its own species of wasps that breed only inside the figs, much like the other seven hundred and fifty fig species, each of which has their own partner wasp.”
“I use a lot of natural pigments in my work. Sometimes, I choose materials with intent, while other times, I’m simply drawn to them. With walnut ink, I’d say it has definitely added a layer to the work. Black walnuts only grow in certain areas of Kashmir. While walnuts do grow in the Himalayas, they are not truly native to India. So, in that sense, it adds another dimension to the piece. But as an artist, I also fall in love with certain mediums and materials, which influence my choices.”
So through Gulistan, you are exploring themes of othering and assimilation.
“That’s exactly what I’m looking at…or rather, questioning. When does something stop being foreign and become native. How does something go from being an outsider to being indigenous? What defines that transition? For example, the Krishna Kamal now grows wild in the Western Ghats. How do you uproot something, and at what point does it belong? It becomes an analogy for how the human mind works. Potatoes originally came from outside India, but today, various breeds of potatoes are completely indigenous, adapted to local weather and climates.”
Gulistan (Onion), 2024, Gopa Trivedi, Watercolour and walnut ink on wasli, Image © Sarmaya Arts Foundation, (2024.58.9 (1)); Printed on recto: “The geographic origin of the onion is uncertain, being described sometimes as native to Iran, sometimes Afghanistan, often Western Pakistan, and even Central Asia- which is likely where its domestication took place. Neither the four Vedas nor the sixteen Upanishads mention the onion, and when the palandu does appear in Aryan writings, it is as a food of the despised native population, the mlecchas, and of foreigners (yavanas), to be shunned by those seeking an austere life.”
When exploring your subjects, do you always seek out this multiplicity in their histories?
“Yes, for the past decade, that has been my process. I look at rhizomatic connections between things. In Gulistan, I also explored the significance of numerical squares, which follow a particular format that has been traditionally considered important.”
