Visit to the Tribal Art Exhibition

Thursday 20/09/2007

India has the largest tribal community anywhere in the world ,except perhaps in Africa ,which boasts of a rich distinct culture. However given the knowledge about them in available to us about them in class I cities, they are mostly perceived as people clad in leaves living in far off jungles..
Open Space, in an attempt to bridge this gap, along with city based writer Randhir Khare took an initiative to give the city a glimpse of this heritage.,Randhir khare ,a teacher ,at the Rewachand Bhojwani Academy in Pune travelling all over the country for a year procuring tribal artifacts .This journey culminated into a 4 day exhibition at the Rewachand Bhojwani Academy . The exhibition featured 14 different types of samples of tribal art forms , from like Madhubani paintings, Pithoro paintings, bhil tribe of rajasthan, shawls from nagaland, and many others. This was one rare opportunity to get familiar with a culture so close yet so distant from us.
It was the students of the school who presented these artifacts to other students explaining them how tribal values, stories and symbolisms manifest themselves in these art. The exhibition displayed not just some rare artifacts collected but also had quiz sessions and graffiti for the visitors to interest them and help them connect with something that they had only seen or heard of only in books or discovery channel.
The exhibition also included the screening of "Guabolombe -- Our Island " a documentary on the Onge tribes of the Andaman islands. This half-hour documentary by Kaushik Ray Gupta focused on a dying tribe with only 51 surviving members.

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