Jayashree Chakravarty’s childhood visits to wilderness in Tripura, a hilly state in northeast India, with her father, both a doctor and an ardent environmentalist, allowed her to be receptive of the nature-world around her. Increasing human dominance mutilating and transforming natural habitats, like water bodies and wetlands in Indian cities stirred her creative plight.

Roots, like many of her works, cryptically speak of the morphing marshlands of Salt Lake in east Kolkata that once held aquatic life, plants, water birds, snails, insects and wild flowers into Salt Lake City. With the greens being ruined by structures in brick and mortar, Roots hint at the possibility of regeneration and recuperation of a gasping city, by returning to nature with a responsibility. The layered sedimentation that accumulates over time - roots, plant remnants, medicinal seeds, stems twigs, dry leaves, dry flowers, cotton, eggshells, and sap, form the stratum in Chakravarty’s cascading paper-fabric scrolls.