Unraveling another face of artistic India

A show at the musée du quai Branly, Paris unravels another face of India: The India of indigenous populations and folk communities, or Adivasis. Spread over the entire territory and identified in the 1950 census, these populations keep up their artistic traditions while being in constant contact with the dominant Indian population.

Equally well-known for living traditions such as dance, music and theatre that developed at the fringes of the huge Hindu communities, they still remain barely known to the Western world.

For long, the representations of the Adivasis were full of prejudices far removed from reality, as much for the Indians as for the foreigners. The exhibition thus reveals their true face, and showcases their amazing artistic productions. ‘Other Masters of India: contemporary creations of the Adivasis’ includes photographs, wall paintings of the Rathava tribe from Gujarat, tribal bronze figurines from Orissa and Chattisgarh, sculptures from North-Eastern India, wooden sculptures from Karnataka and from Bihar and architectural bas-reliefs crafted by the women artists from Chattisgarh.

A curatorial note to the exhibit (general curator : Jyotindra Jain; associated curator : Jean-Pierre Mohen) elaborates: “These people produce astounding creative visual art works that are as utilitarian as they are sacred and quite different from the standard renowned works from the Indian art scene. For the very first time in France, showcases the most representative material, day-to-day, artistic and religious productions of these Indian populations in a thematic and multidisciplinary approach thereby allowing the public to discover an important but still highly unrecognized part of the contemporary popular art scene in India.”

Coming from collections of the musée du quai Branly, European and Indian museums as well as private collections and specific orders from Indian artists within the framework of the exhibition, the showcased objects bear testimony to the vibrancy of the artistic traditions of these different communities, and to their evolution and their exposure to the outside world.

The exhibition culminates with the monographs of world-renowned painters Jivya Soma Mashe and Jangarh S Shyam.