Art from the walls of Meena tribal homes in Rajasthan is celebrated on the pages of this stunning handmade book. The women of the community paint the mud walls and floors of their homes, marking festivals and the changing seasons. Mothers teach their daughters how to paint, passing on their skills and keeping the art alive. Nurturing Walls pays tribute to this extraordinary tradition of public art by women, also known as Mandana painting. We focus on a favourite theme of the artists: animals and their young. The teeming world of Meena art has been carefully recreated here as a series of silkscreen prints, on kraft paper reminiscent of mud walls. The contexts in which the art is created is captured in colour photographs, inserted between the art prints as the book unfolds. Also included are incisive essays on this little-known tradition, making the form of the book as rich and unusual as the art it celebrates. Art /Mixed-Media/Anthropology
ISBN 978-81-86211-68-7
UK ÂŁ12.99 / USA $24.95
paintings that cover the surfaces of walls, floors and courtyards. Playing with negative and positive spaces, the art seems to have the power of creating the illusion of colour, by using just one. And if you are fortunate, you may see the artists themselves, women and girls perched on ladders, or clambering up crude wooden stools to apply their broad brushstrokes on huge walls. The contrast between their exuberantly colourful clothes and the duotone of their surroundings is breathtaking.
The villages of the Meena tribe in Rajasthan are set in the Aravalli hills in the eastern part of the state. Unsurprisingly, the palette of the land is dominated by shades of brown, and from afar, a Meena village with its mud walls and tiled roofs blends into the larger scheme. But move closer and your eyes are struck by the graphic force of the white
To bring them alive, we have silkscreened Mandana images of animal babies and their mothers onto brown paper. These images don’t merely document a tradition – they are the art itself. We have recreated the original visuals in the form of hand prints, using the pages of this book as a location for the art. Each image is an original print.
There is another sense of location which the viewer needs to complete the experience of Mandana painting – and that is the world of the artists themselves, the This is the experience we hope to capture circumstances in which they paint. To in this book. The contemporary artist bring in this context, we have inserted and researcher Madan Meena – who is photographs of the artists at work into himself from the Meena tribe – has the way the book unfolds. It becomes spent more than a decade documenting immediately obvious that the women this little known tradition. In this project, here are more than the usual exotic we yoked our skills in bookmaking to anthropological subjects, by the very his long standing work, to offer this nature of what they do. They are active extraordinary feast to art lovers in the agents, image makers in their own right. form of a book. There is something very moving about The art of the Meena women – called the way these humble women are driven Mandana painting – is both graphic and to be creative, in a lived, everyday sense. decorative. The themes revolve around It gives us much to reflect on what we their daily lives: birds, animals, farm life, take for granted as the provenance of festivals. In all this, there is one overarch- art: for one, their painting is not the ing subject that comes up repeatedly, unique creation of any single individual and that is nurture, looking after the but a tradition grown in a community. young – particularly amongst animals. The work is not produced for a market, So is the theme we have chosen to focus but for themselves, as well as the on, for this first book on the art of the community at large. And viewed in the Meena women: animals and their young. context of their lives, art doesn’t seem
to be a luxury that has to be bought by opportunities and free time. Given the strength and beauty of the images they make, we are forced to take them very seriously as artists – if we do that, many of the notions we inherit about art and artists stand to be challenged. Not that the Meena women mean to challenge any of this. They are not intentionally radical in any sense – on the contrary, they are very much part of the gendered peasant and tribal society of Rajasthan. The Meena tribe, one of the most ancient in India, is the largest tribal group in the state. Today they are a tough agricultural community farming in in the Aravalli hills, in the eastern belt of the region. But originally, they were a warrior clan which ruled over a large part of Rajasthan. Overrun by the militant Rajputs in the 11th century, they managed to survive in the forest by using guerrilla tactics against the Rajputs and later against the British. They were notified by the British under the notorious ‘Habitual Criminal Act’ in 1930, which branded them robbers and criminals, whose movements needed to be restricted. So historical literature has largely bypassed the Meenas, and not too much is known of their history upto the point where they started farming. In this society, the spheres for men and women are
traditionally separate. Apart from helping in the fields, womens’ roles are domestic, confined to their responsibilities within the household. There are strict rules about keeping their heads covered in public. And yet, it is the women – never the men – of the Meena tribe, who paint the walls and floors of the village. Mothers teach their daughters to paint, and this is the way the tradition is passed on. The surfaces they work on are not just the walls within their homes – although they do paint walls, floors, ovens, alcoves, stairways and just about any surface that needs embellishment in the house. Their most interesting creative sides are brought out by the paintings on the outer walls of village houses and courtyards. By aesthetically defining common space, the women are creating public art – with nothing more or less than their own experience, skill, and point of view. There is no self conscious ideology behind any of it, and when they are asked, the women cheerfully say they paint “because it feels good.” Sadly, we know too little about how this exuberant tradition of public culture came about. But the apparent simplicity of the form has great potential for complex feminist analysis, even though we can only speculate on how these women came by their public roles.
Part of the explanation could lie in the fact that the definition of womens’ work in the communal sense of a Meena village is wider than within a nuclear family. Speaking of another context altogether, Engels puts this beautifully: “In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character.” Even though Meena villages are not set up in a communistic mode, it is likely that Meena women stay active in the community in the sense that Engels meant. So simply by working in spaces larger than the confines of their households, they manage to redefine domesticity, both literally and metaphorically. When they paint, they not only explore and discover their own personal potential, but unwittingly redefine social spaces and activities designated as ‘feminine’. Is their art quintessentially feminine? Yes and no. There is nothing particularly gendered about their aesthetic or rendering, as we will see later. But the sensibility which focuses on connectedness, reproduction and nurture certainly is a female
one. The basic phonemes of Mandana art, the mental clay, so to speak, can be traced back to the most primal of collusions – the intimate connection between mother and child. There is no need to enter into tired arguments about whether such femininity is innate or socially constructed – more to the point is that daily acts of nurture are part of the Meena womens’ lived subjectivities as mothers and nourishers. Add to this their observations and deep connection with the same impulse in the animals around them, and we begin to get a sense of their art as a joyful celebration of their daily lives and experiences. This is how Mandana art connects effortlessly to material daily life, without making a huge point of it. And while such humble activities tend to be dismissed as ‘primitive’ or ‘folk’ art, we would argue from a feminist perspective that this is real public culture. It is based on everyday acts of life, transformed creatively into a significance which is more than personal. Here it’s also good to remember that the work is made for an audience, not a market. The audience is the community. The artists don’t see themselves as individuals who want to say something unique, but as part of a community of shared activities and meanings. Sometimes several people work on one painting. And yet the curious thing is that not all artists
are the same, and the way this individu- pictures, Mandana paintings are not ality comes through is fascinating. narratives in the larger sense. If there are tales, these are the stories of a moment – Mandana painting is poised interestingly a character captured – in the manner of between art and craft, inasmuch as a a photograph. Any meaning is allowed, painting consists equally of labour and as long as the signs are agreed on. inspiration. Intricate and careful rendering of traditional detail is the work of a There is a basic symmetry which comes skilled craftsperson, as are the set pieces from stylistic agreement. Style evolves that are worked over and over again. But from a collective definition of public there is so much imagination, emotion space and from actual working with and distinctiveness in individual work inherited rules. Some of these stylistic that it qualifies as art. At the same time, elements are decorative – like the borders there are shared ways of doing things, – and some are ways of rendering, say in and since the mode of painting is an the way only white is used as a pigment, inherited skill, these tend to be formal or the manner in which the peacock tails elements that each artist must keep to. are fashioned. Rules are basically passed on through doing, and this is very much Mandana images are graphic, bold and part of artisanal training. Since rules are decorative. Like other community art from prototypes, older ways of doing, traditions, this painting is radical in its it is the activity of doing that reinforces understanding of art as artifice. The and continues styles. Of course these figures are representational, but nonvary, depending on the location and how realistic, unconcerned with the appearskilled the apprentices are. Discipline is ance of things as they are – reality and needed in the search for unity, and the imagination are never confused with discipline is not a formal quality, but a each other. Perspective, light, proportions, way of working. But – and this is how or likeness are unimportant. As a traditradition changes and stays alive – within tion, Mandana images contain a striking the rigidity of inherited styles, there is number of dualities – they are simultane- always room for innovation, and the new ously graphic and decorative, brown and and exceptional has the potential to white, both geometric and as well as modify the old. So there are endlessly figurative, iconic yet full of character, beautiful variations on the original and straddling the public as well as the peacocks, and we see gleams of indiprivate realm. Unlike many communities vidual brilliance within the collective which focus on story telling through stream.
The particularity and power of the art relies a great deal on its location: walls. Seen in relation to the space that surrounds it, the surfaces are fixed frontiers. Joining structure and aesthetics, Mandana art guides people through public space in a manner characteristic of the masculine provenance of architecture: windows are held in, alcoves are created, and doors framed by images and designs. The art surrounds, holds, drapes and leads the passage through floors in the way signage does. The location of the art – on the walls and floors of houses – also goes with a remarkable acceptance of temporariness. Painting is connected to the seasons, and particularly painstaking art work goes into the celebration of festivals, weddings and other special occasions. Through all this, the artists know that the images will not last, and that everyday use and wind and weather will fade away the most beautiful and laborious work. Yet the outpourings continue, and it is like an awareness of a full life in the face of mortality. This, in the final analysis, is what the art leaves us with. Growing out of a highly formalized form, it stays alive through a feeling of contact with other mysterious worlds. We can guess at what needs art answers in the artists – humble women for whom creative expression is a vital
part of life, not a luxury to be added on after the essentials are secured.
involving skill, effort, discipline and toil. This is a humbling, yet hopeful insight, since it suggests that a more democratic platform for art is possible.
For us, fortunate enough to get a glimpse into this tradition that is almost unknown even within India, the inspiring role of Gita Wolf art in everyday life can only be a revela- Chennai, 2008 tion. It is living proof that ordinary women have in themselves the ability to be creative. By validating what they do, Nurturing Walls is in the nature of a tribute to their joyful resilience. We would like to broaden the definitions not just of women’s lives, but also of our own understanding of the possibilities of art. When traditions such as Mandana painting are granted a serious coeval status in the discourse on art, they emerge from their harmless anthropological niche into a living example of an alternative mode of artistic practice. We then begin to wonder what artists share with other artists, and with the rest of their community. With such a shift in perspective, we might well find ourselves in a new and liberating area of public discourse, where public and private can intersect more profitably. The result could well be art that recreates reality in a unique way, communicating a very special sense of being human. We would also see that when art connects to artisanship, labour enters as an important part of the realm of imagination,
Meena women create beautiful Mandana designs on walls and floor of the houses especially on the occasion of the Diwali festival. For these women artists, simple shapes like squares, circles, triangles and the like become the alphabets for an exercise in picture writing.
Mandana is practiced by different tribes and communities in parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. But the wall Mandana in all its splendour is found in parts of Tonk, Sawaimadhopur, Karoli and Dausa districts of Rajasthan.
The themes of Mandana are a variety of birds, animals and plants, as well as exquisite decorative designs which are highlighted with dots and dashes. These include animals such as the nahar (tiger), bagelda (leopard), bandra (monkey), shyad (wolf), sussa or kadakkhada (rabbit), surada (pig), gandakhada (dog), Kachar gadha (donkey), balaiee (cat), shyamar (deer), gaya (cow), bail (bullock), oont (camel), bhed (sheep), gilaudi (squirrel); birds such as the mor-moradi (peacock), chudya batriya (sparrow), kaagla (crow), Kamedi (Pigeon), Bagula (Grey Heron) and haria (parrot); insects like the pocher (cockroach); reptiles like saanp (snake), chapakali (lizard); the human farmer forms of gujar-gujari; the bail gadi (bullock cart), motor gadi (motor car), oont gadi (camel cart), bicycle, and various forms of flora; Amongst all these forms, their speciality is moradi (peacock) painted in a variety of magnificent styles and shapes mostly on front exterior walls.
In Mandana paintings the Meena women record their past as well as present experiences; so we see images of creatures and things that no longer exist in their present surroundings, but are part of their memory. Mandana art is all pervading: covering the surface of walls and floors, both outside and inside, it finds expression in objects of everyday use such as the kotha-kothi (granaries) and the chulha (the open hearth) which form an integral part of the architectural interior and exterior. The granaries have elaborately painted Mandana in floral and geometric patterns, as well as birds and animals. Carved on the surface are symbols of prosperity, like the images of Ganesha, the swastika or the baoli (step-well motif). Meena women also keep expensive food, ghee and valuables such as jewellery in the granaries, the keys of which remain tucked into their waistbands. The most striking relief Mandana are on walls. Various images are carved into the clay surface, and embellished with embedded coloured glass, stones, circular mirrors, beads and sitaras. In the darkness of the interior, the mirrors and sitaras sparkle and glow with the light that they reflect. They create a celestial world in the dark space of the room. The chulha (open hearth) which is in regular use is similarly covered with Mandana. Meena women regularly smear it
with clay and geru (red earth) and repeatedly paint it. Earthen utensils meant to hold the chulha ash also are painted. Even the simplest of structures is adorned, like the piraunda – a container made of cow-dung, which stores dung cakes during the rainy season. Relief designs with symbolic forms are engraved onto the flattened surface of the piraunda with two fingers, without using any tools or colour. Other objects of everyday use like the endi (head cushion), bijani (hand fan), and dolkya (papiermache bowl) are also marked artistically by the Meena women. The materials and tools used in creating these Mandana are simple everyday ones from their surroundings. Most of these are perishable, so they actually provide a chance for the women to experiment with new forms. The walls and floors of the mud houses are plastered over with fine clay. Given a coating of red geru, the Mandana are then painted on with brilliant white chalk. In the wall and floor Mandana of the Sawai Madhopur region two colours are used instead of the more ubiquitous one: white made of chalk stone, and a red prepared from geru or hirmich. To get a darker tone of red, charcoal powder is mixed with the geru. Wall Mandana requires the following sequence: gar lagana (applying clay to
level the wall); leepana (plastering with clay and preparing the surface of the wall); and potana (uniformly underpainting the prepared clay surface). The actual Mandana is painted on this surface. Brushes are made out of twigs: khajur (date palm) bamboo, reed grass, or cotton. One end of the twig is crushed to form fine bristles, and brush thicknesses are skilfully varied. A floor Mandana is traced out with a finger on a freshly prepared smooth wet surface of clay and cow-dung. A piece of cloth is dipped into colour and gently squeezed from the palm, letting the colour flow smoothly along the finger, to the floor. The most elaborate process of Mandana painting starts two months before the Diwali festival, just after the conclusion of the monsoon season. Women first start repairing their damaged houses, gathering momentum from the Navratara (nine days before the Dusshera) period, during which they work day and night to get the job done. Sunday, Monday and Friday are said to be auspicious days for plastering the walls, while Mandana can be painted throughout the week. As Diwali approaches, the women can be seen painting away well past midnight, in the dim light of burning oil lamps. The entire village is in a frenzy of painting
Mandana, to welcome the goddess of prosperity and wealth – the goddess Lakshmi – into their homes. The finest of Mandana are found in the Nagar-Chad and Talhati region of Tonk and Sawaimadhopur districts. Women from these regions are skilled in the construction of elaborate kotha-kothi, and in creating both relief and plain Mandana on the walls. The Maad, Jagroti and Pachwara regions of Dausa, Sawaimadhopur and Karoli districts, on the other hand, are famous for their folk songs. Called Rasia, Hela, Khyal, Keertan, Pad and Geet, they are sung by both Meena men and women to the rhythm of the Dhol, Nobat, Dholak, Nagara, Manjira, Changa and Duff. These songs connect deeply with Mandana art, through their relationship to nature and its rhythms, and it seems appropriate to end with one which sums up the ethos aptly: Ayo-ayo jeth ashad o Shyam, Dungar moriyo boluyo o! O ji mhara lal, najad vaira vir, Moth-bajro vavo ji.. The season of monsoon has set in, Lord, And the peacock calls from the hills! And so it is time, my dear, To sow pulses and grains in the fields‌
Nurturing Walls: Animal Art by Meena Women Copyright © 2008 Tara Books Pvt. Ltd For the photographs : Madan Meena For the text: Gita Wolf and Madan Meena for their respective essays Design: Natasha Chandani, localfarang.com Production: C Arumugam Printed and bound in India by AMM Screens All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-81-86211-68-7 We are grateful to Kanchana Arni for introducing us to Madan Meena and would like to thank Hivos for research support. A portion of the royalties from the book will go towards the education of needy Meena girls, administered by the Shree Meena Girls Hostel, Kota.
Art Credits Meena art is seasonal and often painted over. It is not always possible to identify individual artists and in some cases, the art is done by groups of women. In some cases, we have been able to trace the artists, but in others, we only have the names of their villages. The names of the artists appear in order of page count: 14 Phula from village Borif 14 (image right), 15 (image left),Kali from village Banota 16 Sampat from village Devli 19 (bottom image) Kamla from village Lasadiya 19 (image top right) Samodra from village Lasadiya 19 (image right), 21 (image on the left) 23 Kali from village Banota 20 (image left) Prem from village Lasadiya 25, 27 (image right) Sankari from village Borda 28 Bajrangi from village Borif 30 (image left) Bajrangi from village Kherla-ke-jhonpadi 35 Uganti and Samodra from village Lasadiya 42 Sampat from village Devli 43 Lali from village Devli 44 (image left) Prem from village Lasadiya Unknown Artists/Known Villages 3 – village Denuka; 4, 34 – village Maharajpura; 6, 24 – villages Chitrapura and Batoda; 7 – village Khajuri; 13 – village Gudasi; 15, 22 – village Banota; 18 – village unknown; 24 – village Chitrapura; 30 – village Paladi; 33 – village Sodanpura; 40 – Lasadiya; 41 – village Devali; 5, 31 – village unknown Painted Villages 1, 7, 8 Lasadiya 3 Banota 13 (in tiles on the left) Borif, Devli, Lasadiya, Hedarpura, Maharajpura, Ramsinghpura, Aasalgaon 16 (in tiles on the right) Lasadiya, Banota, Begampura, Ekada, Borda, Ramsinghpura 17, 26, (pictures of Prem and her daughter Padma), 32, 36, 40 Lasadiya 18 ( in tiles on the left) Aminpura, Laxmipura, Banetha, Borda, Lasadiya, Bagina, Ramsinghpura 21 (in tiles on the right) villages Lasadiya, Paladi, Borda 22 (in tiles on the left) Lasadiya, Borda, Jeenapur 25, 31 Unknown location 27 (in tiles on left) Banota 33 (in tiles on left) Lasadiya, Bordia 44 Devari