Crafts & visual arts

“During our biggest festival ‘Sorhai’ there were decoration on the walls with flower designs, bird and animal figures. I saw my mother and sister drawing red and blue lines on the walls by climbing on the bamboo ladder. [C]enturies-old traditional knowledge and art of building low-cost-no-cost mud-houses and the related skills and crafts, like wall paintings die out.” – Boro Baski in “Is ‘brick house’ the only sign of development?” (translated from an article in Bengali Anandabazar Patrika, 21 July 2019)
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=29829

Bringing order into the passing stream of image and experience: Adivasi art as “collective heritage”

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BY J. SWAMINATHAN  (excerpts from pp. 119-126, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1/2) To presume that Adivasi artists lack the sense of perspective because of mental deficiency or the technical incapacity of ‘proper’ representation is to insult both intelligence and art. Moreover to think that the primitive is not aware of the sense … Read more

Living in harmony with nature: Reflections on Warli and Madhubani traditions by artist Sandhya Arvind – Maharashtra, Gujarat and Bihar

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HARSHINI VAKKALANKA, The Hindu, November 4, 2013 | Read the full article here >> It is as though a piece of their world has been brought onto the walls, mounted onto wooden boards to be taken away to the homes of people whose lives are so vastly different from those in the Warli and Madhubani regions of … Read more

Grass mat products for eco-friendly, organic consumers worldwide: Tribal handicrafts from East Singhbhum accessible through TRIFED – West Bengal

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Antara Bose, The Telegraph, Kolkata, Monday , May 14 , 2012 Grass mat weavers in Janumdih village, East Singhbhum district’s Potka block, will soon see their products selling in retail stores of countries whose names they may not have even heard about. The village, 60km from Jamshedpur, has as many as 80 women and three men … Read more

Video | Spreading awareness of microcredit through shadow play and live music in a very remote tribal area (Video Volunteers) – Andhra Pradesh

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Tip: the end of this video is not to be missed for its humorous approach to a serious issue!

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Warli art “a vivid expression of the daily and social events”: Traceable to the 10th century, rediscovered in the early 1970s – Maharashtra

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  Mysore, October 28, 2010 Warli folk paintings, according to art critic L. Shivalingappa, are paintings from the Maharashtra region. Warli is the name of the largest tribe found on the northern outskirts of Mumbai. “Warli comes from the word ‘warla’, which means a piece of land,” he explains. Warli art was first discovered in the … Read more