Abhijit Banerjee | Jamdaani Weaving

Art Exhibition and Lecture on the history and future of handloom jamdaani weaving by MIT Economist Abhijit Banerjee, Artist-Illustrator Cheyenne Olivier, and Woolmark Prizewinning Garment Designer Suket Dhir. The Exhibition will feature artworks in jamdaani including a woven scroll and garments, and a video on jamdaani weaving.

This is the first exhibition of a textile art project that stands at the intersection of two of Banerjee’s long-term interests–the economics of traditional crafts and the visual presentation of economic ideas. Here will be exhibited the first of 5 woven scrolls based on illustrations by Cheyenne Olivier telling Abhijit Banerjee’s version of the story of Jamdaani weaving from the 18th century to the present day, its encounters with the colonizers (who tried to destroy the industry), the forced migration of the weavers and the struggles of the industry to survive in a market economy and globalizing world. The installation confronts the shimmering multi-colored jamdaani scroll with gritty videos of the actual weaving process by Ranu Ghosh and Suket Dhir’s more practical world of designing clothes using motifs from the project.

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. In 2003, he co-founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with Esther Duflo and Sendhil Mullainathan, and he remains one of the Lab’s Directors.

Banerjee is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society. He is a winner of the Infosys Prize and a co-recipient of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded for his groundbreaking work in development economics research.

Banerjee is the author of a large number of articles and six books, including Poor Economics, which won the Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, Good Economics for Hard Times, both co-authored with Esther Duflo, and Cooking to Save Your Life. He is the editor of three more books and has directed two documentary films.

Banerjee has served on the U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He is a trustee of Save the Children USA, a trustee of the British Museum, and the Chair of the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel and the Global Advisory Board for Covid-19 Response of the government of West Bengal.

Cheyenne Olivier is a French illustrator. She graduated from the Estienne Arts and Design School in Paris and the Decorative Arts School in Strasbourg, where she earned an MFA in Illustration. Her images, characterized by their geometric and playful nature, often center around the visual representation of social and environmental issues. Notably, she collaborated with Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo on a series of ten picture books addressing poverty. Currently, she illustrates a monthly column on food and economics alongside Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee for the Times of India. Olivier has been honoured with the Young Talent Award at the International Comics Festival in Angoulême, as well as the regional Avenir Prize by the French National Crafts Institute. She is currently pursuing a PhD in children’s literature at the University of Tours and the Design School in Orléans. Her connection with India continues to deepen through her collaborations with Indian authors, artists, and readers, along with her active participation in numerous literary festivals and events.

Suket Dhir graduated from the National Institute of Fashion Design and achieved a successful association with Good Earth. The designer has garnered popularity for playful fabrics and attention to detail. His signature creations harmonise leisure and minimalism. Suket Dhir is known as the man of complexities. A former travel risk analyst, Sveltlana Dhir is the muse for the brand.

Following their presentation, they will be joined by Amah Edoh for the conversation. Amah is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the production of knowledge about Africa, and on how “African-ness” is produced across West Africa and Western Europe, both through objects and in bodies. Amah was Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at MIT from 2017 to 2022. She has researched and written on Dutch Wax cloth, a textile designed and manufactured in the Netherlands for West and Central African markets since the early 20th century, that has since become a highly prized textile in these regions. Her latest publication, forthcoming in American Anthropologist, is an autoethnographic exploration of how political and economic upheaval in Togo since the early 1990s impacted the Dutch Wax cloth trade and the Togolese women who, over the course of decades, had made the cloth into a significant cultural artifact in the country.

Part of the Spring 2025 Lecture Series. This event is presented as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT. Artfinity is organized by the Office of the Arts.