The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

primarily on the walls of dwellings. The works are characterised by intricate drawing, geometric patterns and elaborate symbolism. In her work, Kumari has focused on themes such as female infanticide and women’s rights, as well as drawing on local epics and stories. She was raised in the village Madhubani and was taught by her grandmother, the acclaimed Mithila artist Mahasundari Devi. Her brother-in-law Pradyumna Kumar began painting in 2002 under Kumari’s tuition and creates detailed, finely drawn works reflecting contemporary and traditional themes such as pollution or sacred trees. The artists have worked collaboratively on a number of occasions. PATACHITRA ABDUL CHITRAKAR Born c.1985, Naya, West Bengal, India JABA CHITRAKAR Born 1960s, Sabangkhana, West Bengal, India MADHU CHITRAKAR Born 1967, Naya, West Bengal, India MANTU CHITRAKAR Born 1960s, Naya, West Bengal, India MONIMALA CHITRAKAR Born c.1970, Peora, West Bengal, India SONIA CHITRAKAR Born 1998, Naya, West Bengal, India Live and work near Naya Patachitra or pats are scroll paintings fromWest Bengal, intimately bound up with itinerant storytelling and songs. Historically, pats were cloth scrolls on which mythological or epic stories were painted as a sequence of frames. The artists would travel from one village to another slowly unrolling these and singing. Patachitras have been compared to cinema frames or animation, and are said to be one of the oldest forms of audio-visual communication. The Chitrakar (meaning ‘image maker’) community are clustered around a small village in West Bengal. They specialise in making Patachitra and have recently broadened the tradition to include contemporary local and global events. Continuing the ancient purpose of sharing information between villages, artists have begun telling stories as diverse as the Asian tsunami, the Gujarat earthquake, and the assassination of Indira Gandhi, as well as using the scrolls as an educational tool for advocating birth control, and awareness of the spread of HIV. PHAD KALYAN JOSHI Born 1969, Bhilwara, Rajasthan, India Lives and works in Bhilwara Phad paintings are scrolls customarily made on treated cloth and painted with natural pigments. They illustrate epic stories composed around a central deity, often Pabuji or Dev Narayan, two deified heroes important in Rajasthan. The scrolls form a visual backdrop to all-night performances accompanied by music, song and dance. Referred to as ‘reading phad’, the performances would follow the reading from scene to scene, each component of the narrative illuminated with an oil lamp. Like the Kaavad shrines from Rajasthan, the scrolls were made by one group of artists, but commissioned and performed by a different community, the Bhopas. While the performances follow a set chronology, the paintings themselves are non-linear and scatter multiple dimensions of time, space and scale across the canvas. Generally large in size and richly coloured, phads can be painted by more than one artist, who sits on a canvas spread over the ground. Kalyan Joshi is from the Joshi family of Bhilwara, the traditional artists to practice this form. With his father he established Chitrashala, a training institute for reviving and maintaining this vibrant tradition. RAJWAR SCULPTURE ATMA DAS MANIKPURI Born 1972, Udaipur, Chhattisgarh, India BHAGAT RAMRAJAWAR Born 1971, Puhputra, Chhattisgarh, India DAROGA RAM Born 1953 Puhputra, Chhattisgarh, India ROOKMANI BAI Born 1980, Udaipur, Chhattisgarh, India PARBATIBAI SARTHI Born 1955, Rakhara, Chhattisgarh, India Live and work in Surguja District, Chhattisgarh The remote village of Puhputra in Chhattisgarh is now renowned for a small group of artists who have developed a remarkable and unique sculptural tradition to adorn their surroundings. Developing from a post-harvest festival tradition of decorating newly white-washed and repaired houses, the art form was single- handedly transformed by artist Sonabai (c.1930–2007), leaving a lasting legacy to her community (her work appeared in APT3 in 1999). Her only son and the longest living practitioner of the tradition, Daroga Ram, along with Bhagat Ram (a distant cousin of Sonabai’s son) and Atma Das with his wife Rookmani Bai have collaborated to create a range of architectural, sculptural and figurative forms. Along with Parbatibai, a self-taught artist whose figures are inspired by visiting Sonabai’s house, they are some of the few practicing proponents of the tradition. WARLI BALU LADKYA DUMADA Warli people Born 1967, Ganjad, Maharashtra, India Lives and works in Ganjad RAJESH CHAITYA VANGAD Warli people Born 1975, Ganjad, Maharashtra, India Lives and works in Ganjad The Warli are an indigenous people who originate from the rural Thane District in Maharashtra, India. Warli painting has its roots in traditions extending as far back as 2500 BCE. Originally painted by women using rice paste and a bamboo stick on the red mud and cowdung walls of their dwellings, it was used to record auspicious and ceremonial occasions. It is said that the Warlis do not have a written language, and their art served as a form of documentation. Balu Ladkya Dumada was the first student of Jivya Soma Mashe, a pioneering artist who gained widespread recognition from the late 1980s. Dumada’s depictions of Warli stories and daily life are executed with rich detail and dramatic scale. Rajesh Chaitya Vangad is a third-generation Warli painter and has expanded the ancient Warli pictorial language through a wide range of subjects. 262—263 ARTIST PROFILES