BackThe Tara Books drawings
An exhibition and a book of drawings that have enlived many folk and tribal stories published by Tara Books
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Tara Books, the 21-year-old independent publishing house based in Chennai, has been using visuals and image-making as the central idiom for storytelling. Its several hundred publications have drawn on non-metropolitan and indigenous artistic traditions, such as folk art, tattoo art like the Godhna from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, and mural-making, and has offered practitioners of these art forms the platform of the blank page.
The publishing house co-founded by Gita Wolf in 1994 is a collective of artists and designers that presents the text, whether a tribal folk tale from Madhya Pradesh or a contemporary retelling of the Ramayan from Sita’s perspective, through powerful visuals.
From 24 November, Mumbai-based arts and culture gallery Artisans’ will showcase 36 limited-edition prints of drawings from Tara Books publications over the years. The show, Made By Hand, will include drawings by Bhajju Shyam, Tejubehan, Rambharos Jha and Ram Singh Urveti, whose pieces have brought to life the tribal and folk stories of their communities.
On 28 November, they will release a book and screen a film, both titled Between Memory And Museum: A Dialogue With Folk And Tribal Artists—the outcome of a workshop in Bhopal in 2010.
The workshop, which sought to re-examine the function of a museum, especially in the context of non-metropolitan art practices, was conducted at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, a government-run anthropological museum in Madhya Pradesh, set up with the assistance of tribal artists in the 1970s, to showcase tribal and folk artefacts from around the country.
The idea emerged from a passing remark by Bhajju Shyam, who belongs to the Gond tribe in central India. Shyam, who was involved in setting up the museum and has had a long working relationship with Tara Books, talked about how he helped create a Gond exhibit—a village house, with the things one finds in such a home. It still felt strange to him, however.
“Museums take cultural objects and remove them from their natural settings. We wanted to contest the idea of what a museum is, so we invited folk artists to talk about how they wanted their works to be shown," says Arun Wolf, rights manager, film and media, Tara Books. During the course of the workshop, many visuals and ideas emerged; one, he says, reimagined the museum as a granary since grain is one of the most important motifs in our culture.
Between Memory And Museum will be priced at ₹ 1,500. The exhibition Made By Hand will be held from 24-28 November, 11am-7pm, at Artisans’, 52-56, VB Gandhi Marg, Kala Ghoda, near Rhythm House, Fort, Mumbai. Prices range from ₹ 1,500-20,000.
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