Social Cause: Gond Art by Rural Children

This week we focus on Ahambhumika, an NGO which is working actively to empower rural children by teaching them arts and crafts in an effort to raise funds and to also equip them with vocational skills. 

 

Ahambhumika, an NGO is an active campaigner on social media and strives to raise funds by direct sale and auction of tribal paintings made by their volunteers. The bright and colourful Gond paintings have found many homes and have thereby helped to support them in their work with underprivileged children. Ahambhumika is a small organization based in Bhopal, comprising of a few like-minded people consisting of artists, housewives, engineers, tourist guides, teachers and government employees. Besides supporting a few rural schools, they have a literacy center which provides basic education to 120 rural children.

The organization aims at helping underprivileged children, destitute and orphans by involving people from cities and by collecting material discarded by them (clothes, bicycles, books, toys, newspapers etc.) for the underprivileged people.According to Subrat Goswami, Founder Ahambhumika, “We also impart training in embroidery and art, especially Gond Art to rural children and women. One of our volunteers does the Gond Art and we are now teaching this to a group of rural children. Besides this we also make efforts to raise funds through sale of paintings made by our volunteers.”

 

The Gond tribe is one of the largest Adivasi communities in Madhya Pradesh and as is common with most tribal communities to express their joys and sorrows collectively and in a ritualistic manner, Gond art follows this trend. Their art form conforms to the belief that ‘viewing a good image begets good luck’, which leads them to decorating their houses and floors with traditional tattoos and motifs. Gond art is now practiced on paper and canvas and many artists have found success through this form of tribal art. (Readers will remember that I had written recently about Nankusia Shyam, the wife of the famous Gond artist Jangarh Singh Shyam, you can read the article here.)

Ahambhumika aims to raise funds through the sale of these paintings. It is wonderful that the organization not only provides literacy to children, but also puts in substantial efforts to empower them by providing skill-based learning. 

If you would like to help them out in any capacity please visit their website or contact them here.

Artist Profile: Mini Arora

Mini Arora is an abstract artist, whose roots lie in India. She was brought up and educated in England, and lived many years in the US before returning to her homeland. With this cross cultural migration, she has dealt with a lot of 'in-betweeness'. Her work reflects this diaspora.

The issues of identity and not belonging recur in her paintings, but goes further than that of culture, and deeper into the notions of man and his identity in this life, which usually begins with a search for spirituality - 'for the ultimate level of consciousness, the hidden psyche, the perfect spirit or state of bliss'.

She works from her inner consciousness, and uses a palette knife to create rich layers of texture. She says, "texture is something that appeals to me; in many of my acrylic and oil works you will notice the profusion of layers to give a rich multiplicity. I want the viewer to peer into my painting to see what lies beneath, as if one were looking into one’s soul."

You can see more of her works here.


Art Scene India now features artists on a regular basis.  If you wish to be profiled on artsceneindia.com, please send in your submissions according to the guidelines listed under Submit.
 

Limited Edition Prints: Rodin’s Kiss

Limited Edition Prints: Rodin’s Kiss – a Valentine’s Day mash-up of romance, culture and collectibility

Rodin’s Kiss is one of the most iconic sculptures of modern Western life, depicting a tender moment on a monumental scale. The marble statue has become synonymous with romantic gestures and blends a strong erotic charge with the idealism of true love.

Raksha Patel and The Indian Art Centre gallery have collaborated to release this set of limited edition art prints in time for Valentines’s Day, as a sophisticated and thought-provoking exploration of the role of romantic love in our mass-produced age where gesture of love has become global and disposable. Ideal for lovers, for art-collectors and for those fascinated by the iconography of great works of art, these fine art prints provide an unsentimental and strongly graphic response to one of the world’s best known artworks.

 
Patel, who is London-based and trained at the Slade and St Martin’s School of Art, has a strong pedigree of international exhibitions, projects and commissions. In this new venture, she has given Rodin’s Kiss a fresh perspective, blending the multi-layered screen prints with 1960s pop culture to create an accessible but provocative take on the role of iconographic images in the modern psyche, especially images that have become part of mass media consumption.

Each limited edition print is powerful and highly collectible and will be offered at £250 each, a price that puts them within the scope of new collectors as well as providing a unique and distinctly affordable investment for those who love new print works and who will find the Kiss by Patel to be a substantial addition to their collection.

View the prints at The Indian Art Centre gallery
For enquiries contact Lucie: lucie@theindianartcentre.com

Sponsored post.

Art In Interiors: Chromatic Frames to Display Art

Colours and lighting directly influence our state of mind and emotions and therefore creating a vibrant living space which is in harmony with our individual personalities and family choices can be one of the most liberating experiences ever!  

It’s amazing how a beautiful work of art can alter the ambience of home interiors and make a statement which is as unique as you.  Paintings, photographs and wall installations can completely enliven drab interiors and anchor the space to create a focal point around which the entire décor scheme can be centered. When art and artifacts are displayed to their advantage their beauty is enhanced and the overall space transforms substantially.

Although, an artwork is intrinsically capable of creating a visual impact, the effect can be magnified manifold by selecting a frame which complements it perfectly.  Interestingly, a frame need not necessarily be an ornate or gilt wooden frame attached to the painting, but can also be an extension of the art! 

Art can be displayed creatively to highlight the painting, drawing or photograph and also to create a seamless, cohesive look, which is visually aesthetic. One of the ways to achieve this is by painting the entire background wall in such a way that it offsets and spotlights the artwork.

Completely contrasting colour shades, a dominant colour from the painting or any other complementary shade or hue can be painted around the artwork as a rectangular or a square border to frame the artwork and create a dramatic or theatrical effect. Asian Paints has an amazing line-up of colours and textures, along with a paint selector tool that allows you to choose the paint type, colour and effect that perfectly matches your needs. It therefore enables your vision and idea of a beautiful home! The transformation of space with judicious use of colour can be simply stunning.

You could also have the entire wall painted in a colour of your choice keeping the artwork in mind, so that the backdrop essentially forms a chromatic frame for the painting or even an artifact. The overall effect here is often understated and unified if you select complementary colours. Essentially, the larger visual frame helps to further define the focal area and highlight the painting. The painting itself can be unframed or have an inconspicuous beading to avoid overdoing the effect. Along with the ambient lighting you can also use spotlights to emphasize the artwork and to enhance the effects of colours and other nuances. This is a wonderful way to transform your interiors and give it a sophisticated and architect designed look.

 

If you look at some of these images, the effect of background colour on highlighting the painting and artifacts is clearly visible. Asian Paints Home Solutions offer some fabulous options in creating walls that are inspiring. Colournext, also from Asian Paints is a trendsetting endeavour that translates colour intelligence into measurable decor ecosystems and inspiring trends in contemporary visual culture. It facilitates the process of achieving balance between wall colours, textures and the artworks. It can therefore offer the perfect solution to displaying your artworks, artifacts and objet d'art with great style and individuality.

Play around with colours and textures, while keeping your artwork in mind and you can easily create interiors that are unusual, stunning and completely in sync with your ideas and visual vocabulary. Any artwork can be displayed innovatively to become part of a unified decor scheme, whether it is minimalist, traditional, contemporary or modern and yet make a statement.

Colours and lighting directly influence our well-being, state of mind and emotions and therefore creating a vibrant living space which is in harmony with our individual personalities and family choices can be one of the most liberating experiences ever. 

Book Review: Folktales from India by AK Ramanujan

Folktales from India by AK Ramanujan, is a selection of oral tales from 22 languages offering a delightful platter of one hundred and ten stories originating from different parts of the country, yet sharing a collective ethos which is bound to resonate with every Indian.

As the well-known poet and author, Ramanujan describes it; the book presents ‘examples of favorite narratives from the subcontinent’. The selected tales are from actual tellers, rather than from literary texts and some were personally collected or recollected by him.  Essentially, these are then stories which have not been published in English earlier.  Readers interested in Indian folklore and culture will be aware that Ramanujan has contributed immensely to these subjects. 

A scholar, author and folklorist, he published significant works on both classical and modern variants of literature in several regional languages and is widely referred to in folklore studies. Given the author's  credentials and scholarly contributions, this book becomes an important effort in documenting oral traditions and folklore. For several years I have been planning to read his books but had an opportunity only now.

The introduction by Ramanujan helps in contextualizing the stories from the perspective of a folklorist - to understand the context and function of a tale, its significance and meaning and its fitment amongst other texts and performances of a specific culture.  The stories are categorized not by region, but by their theme so we have stories which are male-centered, women centered, about fate, death, gods and demons, humour, animals and stories about stories!

Many of the tales are familiar as we have heard them in our childhood, some in the form presented here and others with minor variations.  Each story captures the specificities of the region and the cultural idiosyncrasies, and thus on ‘migration’ every tale adapts to local peculiarities and morphs to assume different shapes and forms, while retaining its original structure. Therefore as is intrinsic to oral traditions, which tend to travel far and wide some stories here may also sound familiar to people residing in different parts of the world.  

Akbar and Birbal, Tenali Rama, Hiraman parrot are familiar protagonists; the evil queen, the cunning sister, the penniless Brahman, the clever princess, the tortured daughter-in-law are characters around which many oral tales have been woven.  Here there are stories of victimization, chivalry, selfless service and other human/superhuman strengths and flaws as situations unfold to prove a point.  A ‘moral’ lesson is not mandatory at the end; often it is enough to outwit another.  Excessively violent at times, some of these tales can be read by children only with adult guidance and supervision.

Told in a simple colloquial language, these are stories describing a forgotten era which seem to be far removed from our present world. Gods, demons and ghosts have a form and animals talk and converse with humans, interestingly their actions are often as clever and silly as humans! 

A delightful read in most parts, you will find the book entertaining on a lazy afternoon with a hot cup of coffee!  It describes India - the vastness, diversity, traditions and the myths, superstitions and folklore. A cultural cauldron that reminds you of an ancient time!

Let me know if you have read the book. What did you think of it?  Please mention it in the comments section below.

You can purchase the book here

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Book Review: Between the Lines: Identity, Place, and Power