The Flower, The Labor, and The Sea

September 27, 2025 - June 28, 2026
Museum Galleries
Detail from a purple and white embroidered textile depicting many scenes along a trade route, such as sailing ships, laborers and scenes of leisure.
Bhasha Chakrabarti, The Intoxication of the Flower, the Exhaustion of the Labor, the Circulation of the Seas, and the Seduction of the Stitch (detail), 2023-2025. Museum purchase: gift of Frances Middendorf and Elizabeth T. and Dorothy N. Casey Fund 2025.38.

In the late 1700s, the ships of Parsi merchants began returning from China to India with recently emptied opium chests filled with embroidered Chinese silks as gifts for their wives. These textiles were quickly embraced by other Indians, ultimately becoming an iconic type of saree known as the Parsi gara. Could it have been the residue of the opium that made the Parsi gara so intoxicating? While these unique embroidered garments continue to be valued and celebrated today, painful histories of exploitation are hidden within their folds. This exhibition deconstructs the “high” of the Parsi gara to shed light on the colonial oppression and the vicious opium trade with which it is entangled. In addition to historical works, this installation also includes a new textile commissioned by the RISD Museum, produced in collaboration between Bhasha Chakrabarti and contemporary gara designer Ashdeen Lilaowala. 

Guest curated by Bhasha Chakrabarti with Kate Irvin, curator of costume and textiles. Graphic identity by Betty Wang. 

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.

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