Home & The World

Showing at the exhibition is Warli artist Jivya Soma Mashe,65,one of the first to break away from tradition. Mashe has brought the paintings,traditionally made on walls,to a more saleable cowdung-coated cotton paper. Sonabai,another artist from Madhya Pradesh,works in clay,constructing little figurines. At the age of 67,she turned to creating artwork to kill boredom. Now she is considered a prominent artist. Unlike traditional artists,Sonabai assembles her individual figurines into wall installations that recount a story. Thangaiya R,too,has given his monumental terracotta horses and elephants that dominate the gallery space,a global character. He paints them in vibrant colours that will appeal to viewers.

Dr CS Gupta,Deputy Director of the Museum collection,points out that the presence of tribal art and craft at galleries and large international museums will require the artists to innovate. “They are now addressing topics that touch their lives and are willing to allow the depiction of modern elements like the scooter and the airplane into their narrative,” she says.

Gupta adds that the Museum encourages artists to innovate by exposing them to the urban market through live demonstrations. “When I went to Paris to watch them mount the show,it reinforced my faith that an exhibition of this stature can highlight tribal art and craft,” she says. Gupta hopes that the Museum can organise more international shows of tribal art.

Meanwhile,an upcoming exhibition slotted at the Devi Art Foundation,Anupam Poddar’s swanky art space in Gurgaon,in September,focuses on the tribal artwork. The exhibition is a joint effort with Jack Fruit Research and Design,Bangalore,and is titled ‘Vernacular in the Contemporary’. It will highlight the globo-local sensibilities of artists from various regions of India .

Edward S Cooke of Yale University specialises in American Decorative Arts at the department of Art History and recently lectured at JNU on the politics of modern globalised craft. However,he is critical of the trend. “We must be aware of the upshots of packaging and positioning of such art in a global market— how ‘authentic’ is this art form when it is sold on websites that are notorious for turning traditions into products,” questions Cooke.