We have all heard of women who played passive roles or assistants in art forms across the subcontinent, such as the “torch-bearing” wives of the Bhopo bards or storytellers in Rajasthan, affectionately called Bhopi by the locals – who held a lamp and illuminated the room from which their husbands told the epic anecdotes. John D. Smith writes in The Epic of Pabuji about Parbu Bhopo and the tradition of bards singing, dancing and telling stories from the Pabuji epic, depicted in the cloth par or phad with elaborate paintings.
Smith describes how Parbu Bhopo’s wife also sometimes sang with him. Women have always participated in art that went unnoticed in the mundaneness of life – they have traditionally been custodians of making rangolis and arranging flowers at festivals and ordinary mornings across the subcontinent. But they did not limit themselves to “secular art.”
Art, tradition and mathematics
Women across Assam have tirelessly weaved intricate motifs and patterns on cotton, eri, muga and pat silk – an art form that is part of the state’s core heritage. For these women, weaving has always been more than just a livelihood – it is a sign of their identity – a means that connects them to their roots, to their mothers and grandmothers who have passed the craft down through generations.
Source: Adventure River Cruises
The rhythm of the loom creates designs and motifs inspired by nature, folklore and everyday life, each with a symbolic meaning and regional specificity, as well as a fixed geometric pattern that contains both art and calculation. A colleague at JNU who studied traditional mathematics has spoken about the involvement of mathematics in these crafts, a fact we ignore while admiring the designs. Women traditionally master the art forms Warli, Pattachitra, MadhubaniPatchwork, embroidery and more, all excellent means of art, craft, skill and mathematics.
The craftswoman and her craft: heroine at work
While women in the arts world, as elsewhere, are largely preoccupied with stories of male greatness, there have been recent works that have begun to highlight their contributions to folk art forms. In an article about Outlook titled “We celebrate the women who shaped India’s folk traditionsSukhada Khandge speaks in detail about the amazing contributions of women in the development of diverse forms of folk art.
In an article about Outlook titled “We celebrate the women who shaped India’s folk traditionsSukhada Khandge speaks in detail about the amazing contributions of women in the development of diverse forms of folk art.
She mentions theater artists and dancers in Maharashtra, as in the paper written by her father, Dr. Prakash Khandge, wrote the book “Lokrang Nayika”, in which she celebrates the lives of women from small towns with humble and often challenging backgrounds who have left their mark in the world of theatre, art and dance.
Khandge Conversations about folk artist and tamasha performer Vithabai Narayangaonkar, who was said to be so interested in her art that during one of her performances, when she was nine months pregnant, she started the show with the bump, in between went backstage, delivered the baby, cut the cord and came back on stage to continue the performance.
Frida Kahlo, folk art and the joy of pain
This theme of resilience and passion is reflected in the lives of groundbreaking female artists outside India, such as Frida Kahlowho excelled not only in art but also in science and literature, was taught by her father to “think for herself,” which was unusual for a woman in the 1930s. A driving force behind all art is pain. In Frida’s case, it was both physical and emotional, from polio, a nearly broken spine, a limping leg, and a near-fatal accident that left her paralyzed for months.
Source: Architectural Digest
Unsure whether she would live or die, she began painting. She soon began “living,” interacting with communist activists and exploring the world. She met Diego Rivera, a socialist painter. After her marriage to Rivera Frida She continued to paint, but found herself more drawn to folk art – Mexican folk art – and incorporated these elements into her work and personal expression, particularly through her clothing and accessory style.
She recognized and made a name for herself as a “disobedient” young woman who was expelled from school.
But art requires women to be disobedient, sometimes rebellious and even revolutionary, freeing themselves from the shackles of family and social life.
But art requires women to be disobedient, sometimes rebellious and even revolutionary, freeing themselves from the shackles of family and social life. Female artists also experience an all-encompassing pain that can neither be expressed nor hidden. It is a perpetual, life-threatening, yet faithful kind of pain that promises to stay, that helps one create, that is liberating, acts as the highest form of catharsis, and is present in one form or another throughout their lives, until such time as they live, are forced to live, or are not hunted after being branded as witches.
Source: FII
But their art forms endure, or are perhaps preserved by friends and family who remember them years after their passing, at gatherings where they once made their presence felt, through their lavani or tango, or their songs, or the strings of the lyre they strum, or the strokes of their brush that painted joy and pain on canvases of hope.
Dr. Swaswati Borkataki is a freelance writer and editor. She completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University and her areas of interest include religion and folklore, women’s and gender history, food and culinary history, among others.
