BEYOND SERENDIPITY

A carryover from a craft exhibition titled Traditions and Expressions at SAF 2016 curated by Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Manjari Nirula, which was showcased in Hyderabad. In Western discourse, the so-called categories of folk and tribal arts and crafts have been considered under several antithetical binaries, such as magical vs. aesthetic, collective vs. individualistic, craft vs. art and traditional vs. contemporary. By any standard, the two components of each binary mentioned above are not mutually exclusive – an object need not be bereft of artistic intent and properties while serving a magical function; it may be a part of a collective tradition of belief and visual idiom and still may have been produced with an identifiable individual’s skill and aesthetic vision; if an object is labour-intensive, it could still be an inventive personal creation; and lastly, tradition has never been a static entity – it is always evolving, imbibing and responding to external cultural contacts and in that sense, is continuously ‘contemporary’. H. Gene Blocker’s description of “primitive art” equally applies to craft: it is not devoid of aesthetic interest, it is created by a conscious producer of art, and subject to critical appraisal; it is set apart from ordinary life, represents the world or events literally or symbolically and involves the possibility of innovation within a tradition. The exhibition “Indian Crafts: Tradition and Expression” is based on these ideas.

Images courtesy Lara Xu Photography