Warli Painting - Tribal Art From India

During Parramasala, a free art exhibition will be presented in the foyer of Riverside Theatres, showcasing the beautiful and ancient artistic traditions of the Warli people of India. 

The people of the Warli tribe are situated in the Thane district of Maharashtra India and number over 30,000 members. They have their own beliefs, life and customs which are separate from Hinduism. They are the indigenous original inhabitants or “Adivasis”. The Warli speak an unwritten dialect and their myths and legends are handed down as an oral tradition. The Warli paintings date back to cave paintings found in the area from 3000 BC.

The Warli Gods are symbolised by animals: the tiger, the snake, the ant and the spider. The tiger is the strength of the forest; the power and protection that supernatural forces can give. When a Warli man feels secure he will say,  “The tiger is on my back”.

The Warli live frugaly as subsistence farmers. They have ritual ceremonies for marriage, harvest and death. Every Warli hut has a ritual marriage painting on  the wall above the cow dung floor. The marriage painting is traditionally created by the women of the village as a collective invocation for fertility and good harvests.

Only recently, with the support of the Indian government, the paintings have been reproduced on paper and canvas, depicting daily life and the Warli creation stories and legends. The men have also now taken up the process of painting. Jivya Some Mase was the first master painter to be recognised internationally. He was featured in the Paris exhibition, Magician De La Terre (Magicians of the Earth).

The figures are drawn with white rice flour onto a cow dung background mixed with henna, red ochre or black ash. The images have a soft lyrical quality that seems to represent the constant movement of nature. The Warli master painters have managed to maintain their traditional art form and yet carry it forward to a new audience outside the confines of the rural village.

There are over twenty five million weavers and craftsmen in India. The Indian government would find it difficult to provide industrial jobs for all these individuals. This is why artists and especially indigenous artists, have been called craftsmen and their cultural/ritual art production has been labelled 'craft'.This enables their ability to engage in the market place but often reduces their work to “bazaar painters” status and creates a wide chasm from the elite contemporary studio artists.

This Warli exhibition is part of a movement to define the emergance of a kind of Indian Indigenous modern art. Individual artists have emerged from the collective process of “art/craft” production and now stand as artists in their own right. Just as the catalyst of Australian Aboriginal Art  transformed and produced a generation of artists, there is strong potential for a similar renaissance in rural India.

All paintings will be on sale. Enquiries can be made to the curator Narmada Smith at narmadablue@yahoo.com

The sale of these works directly benefit  the Warli artists represented.  The primary intention is to provide assistance to support the future develpoment of  new and emerging Indian tribal artists. The sale of work also supports the Prasad Project in Maharashtra that offers pre-natal health, Aids programmes and medical assistance to Adivasi villagers.

 www.warli.com.au.

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