This volume celebrates the diversity of the vast subcontinent by examining little known folk traditions of village and nomad peoples. It presents the world of arts in rural India-women's ritual diagrams created anew each day of rice flour, intricately embroidered lotuses and elephants and terracotta offerings to deities-all set against a backdrop of painted walls and desert skies. Drawing upon the traditions of India's some half million villages, the book helps comprehend the inner logic behind the almost numberless acts of Hindu devotion that occur each day, many of which involve the adornment of homes and altars and the creation of clay vessels and images. They show how, in traditions of embroidery and dress, we can 'read' the complicated ethnic and caste relationships that characterize the societal matrix of the rural peoples. Consequently, the India presented here is village rather than city, local and regional rather than national, peaceful rather than chaotic, spiritual rather than sensational, and despite the vast changes taking place, essentially timeless. The essays in this book are based on field research by leading experts Nora Fisher, Judy Frater, Stephen Huyler, Jyotindra Jain and Vijaya Nagarajan.
This book accompanied the 1993 exhibition of the same name which was selected one of the four winners in the Sixth Annual AAM Curators' Committee Exhibit Competition.
INDIA. The very word, for a Westerner, calls up myriad conflicting visual images: teeming cities with flower bedecked cattle wandering among the urban poor, dark-eyed, mysterious jeweled and veiled women in colorful silk saris; similarly dark-eyed children, the eyes imploring us for a meal; the sacred Ganges and the burning funeral pyres along its banks; Mother Theresa's pious and deeply etched face; a holy man sitting on a bed of nails; the gleaming and pristine Taj Mahal. But these stereotypical images of India, too often created by travel ads, social agency appeals for help, newsclips and the occasional television documentary, only begin to suggest the complexity and richness of Indian culture. Focusing on customs that we perceive to be exotic, even sensational, and on the urban problems confronting India today, these images- if left intact and unexamined-rob us of a true understanding of the diverse peoples and places that comprise modern India.
So it is that we offer up Mud, Minor and Thread: Folk Traditions of Rural India, in the hope that the museum's many visitors and readers of this volume will consider anew their images of India. The pictures presented by the distinguished writers whose work appears herein are very different ones. Drawing upon the traditions of India's some half million villages, they help us to begin to comprehend the inner logic behind the almost numberless acts of Hindu devotion that occur each day, many of which involve the adornment of homes and altars and the creation of clay vessels and images. They show us how, in traditions of embroidery and dress, we can "read" the complicated ethnic and caste relationships that characterize the societal matrix of the rural peoples whom they have studied so diligently. Consequently, the India presented here is village rather than city, local and regional rather than national, peaceful rather than chaotic, spiritual rather than sensational, and despite the vast changes taking place. essentially timeless.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
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