Artist Jayasri Burman’s Baluchari silk saris are as vibrant as her canvases

When she travels, and not just in India, Burman shops to her heart’s content. Visiting Egypt, she landed at a local market and picked multiple galafeyas (a traditional loose-fitting garment), while a trip to London several years ago landed her at the German label OSKA’s store, and she’s been a returning client since then.

Weavers Studio

Weavers Studio

Indi-maximalism

Burman’s style is maximalist, not in the glittery frou frou-laden confections you would typically visualise, it is underpinned by comfortable silhouettes. She invests in plenty of Indianwear and fluid-fit outfits, from handloom maxi dresses to kurtas crafted from cotton or silk. Intricately woven and embroidered dupattas or shawls overlay the ensembles, and her passion for colour is apparent in everything. Her oversized glasses serve as accessories along with jewellery. Burman has accumulated a lot of silver jewellery over the years, though she finds heavier pieces tiring to wear now. “I was thinking the other day that I should put them on the coffee table in my living room, like a piece of art,” she laughs.

For special occasions, she turns to saris. Benarasis are an enduring favourite, and more recent acquisitions include a tussar drape with kantha embroidery. But few textiles move Burman more than Baluchari silk saris from Bengal, distinguished by their ornate pallus and borders handwoven with motifs from myths and folklore. “The Baluchari has my heart,” she says. “Weaving is a form of storytelling. I imagine I could have sat and worked with those weavers thousands of years ago,” she muses.

She found a different way to tell a woven story earlier this year when she hand-painted a lehenga for Radhika (Merchant) Ambani in collaboration with Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla. While she has created art on textiles before, notably a trio of large-scale works for a 2009 exhibition at Lalit Kala Akademi, this marked her first creating a garment. The lehenga featured women painted by the artist in her signature style across twelve panels, over which, intricate brush strokes demonstrate the same language as you would find on her oil or acrylic paintings. “It was as if Radhika wore my canvas.”

Painting a lehenga offered a tactile expression for the costumed finery that Jayasri Burman has always applied on her canvases and considers crucial to her practice. “The universe is made by someone, a dhathri (Mother Earth). The rivers, mountains, fish and birds—these are the jewels She has made on earth,” says Burman. The act of dressing up, of ornamenting oneself, has similar significance. “It gives us a sense of character, shows who we are.”

Jayasri Burman with longtime friend, Darshan Shah, founder of Weavers Studio

Weavers Studio

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