mapping a liminal nurturing of kantha into … narain thesis.pdfnurtured by the meaningful...
TRANSCRIPT
MAPPING A LIMINAL: NURTURING OF KANTHA
INTO CONTEMPORARY ART.
Natasha Narain
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) Kala Bhawan, Viswa Bharati University, India.
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
2017
3
Keywords
• Automatic drawing, catharsis, connection, conflict, complex and hybrid identity,
goddesses, interdisciplinary, kantha, material culture, memory, making a place,
painting, portability, reconfigure, reflexive, reparation, restitution, sacred, South
Asia, touch, transnational feminism, transcultural, tradition, textile, transformation.
4
Abstract
Kantha emerged as an embroidery and textile-based personal storytelling craft, anchored in
women's experiences in undivided Bengal. Historical events and the increased complexities
of a globalised world have altered the nature of kantha. This research examines different
approaches that revitalise this tradition in contemporary practice. My project set out to
discover how the conceptual and formal strategy of kantha could be reinterpreted through
contemporary art in a way that acknowledges history and the trauma and loss involved. It
does this through creative practice where kantha techniques are applied to different media
and presented as a contemporary art installation, to reveal how a polyphonous reconnection
with the past may be possible. This creative research is then contextualised within the
practices of a number of contemporary artists who have integrated local and/or culturally
specific motifs, metaphors, media and techniques into their art practices as a way to consider
broader humanitarian issues and themes of cultural and environmental loss as seen through
the lens of personal experience. What I discovered is that rather than simply providing a
replication of kantha, this approach offers a self-reflexive solution that permits hybridised
cultural complexity and a portable method of making place. Using kantha as the basis for my
research design allows singular works to be interrelated and layered to offer open-ended
meanings at the interstices between the personal and the mythical, across cultural and geo-
political boundaries.
5
Table of Contents
Keywords ..................................................................................................................................3
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................................5
List of Images ..............................................................................................................6
Statement of Original Authorship .............................................................................................9
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................10
Chapter 1: Introduction .....................................................................................11
1.1 Background ...................................................................................................................11
1.2 Context ..........................................................................................................................13
1.3 Purpose .........................................................................................................................14
1.4 Thesis Outline ...............................................................................................................15
Chapter 2: Contextual Review...........................................................................16
2.1 Historical Background ..................................................................................................16
2.2 Loss and the Maternal Divine .......................................................................................22
2.3 Contextual Practices: Artists .........................................................................................25
2.4 Traditions of kantha ......................................................................................................31
2.5 Living tradition .............................................................................................................37
2.6 Summary and Implications ...........................................................................................38
Chapter 3: Methodology and Processes ............................................................40
3.1 Methodology .................................................................................................................40
3.2 Kantha as a method .......................................................................................................41 3.2.1 Kanthas ...............................................................................................................41 3.2.2 Collage................................................................................................................43 3.2.3 Bricolage ............................................................................................................46
3.3 Related research activities ............................................................................................48
3.4 Reflection ......................................................................................................................50
Chapter 4: Creative Work .................................................................................53
4.1 Canvas Painting ............................................................................................................53
4.2 The Dolls ......................................................................................................................57
4.3 Prayer Wheels ...............................................................................................................62
4.4 Artist’s Books ...............................................................................................................64
4.5 Installation and Sound ..................................................................................................66
Chapter 5: Conclusion ........................................................................................72
Bibliography ..............................................................................................................76
6
List of Images
1. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kashmir, Kantha painting, detail (developing stage),
oil, mixed media, stitch and collage on unframed canvas. 180 x 100 cm.
2. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, undivided Bengal, nineteenth
century, cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery, 73 x 72.4cm. Stella
Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Mason, 2010. 203. Plate
20). Accession number: 1968-184-12.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/2010/364.html
3. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, Undivided Bengal, nineteenth
century, Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery, 97.8 x 94 cm, Stella
Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Mason, 2010, 216, plate 34).
Accession number: 1994-148-704.
4. Kantha, detail, maker unknown, Jessore District, undivided Bengal, nineteenth
century, cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery, 88.9 x 81.3cm, Stella
Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Mason, 2010, 207, plate 24).
Accession number: 1994-148-679.
5. Natasha Narain, 2013-2015, Ivory and S.W.M.I., photographic reproduction of
dress as a body and doll as a deity. (Where S.W.M.I. stands for she will / will not
make it).
6. Maker: Dhanapati, Kantha, detail, Goddess Chandi. Nineteenth century,
Faridpur District, Bengal. 165 x103cm, Stella Kramrisch Collection,
Philadelphia, (Mason, 2010, 188, plate 4).
7. Arpita Singh, 2006, Whatever is here, oil on canvas, 214 x 275cm. Exhibited:
2014, Other narratives - Other structures, Lalit Kala Akademi. Vadehra Art
Gallery Collection, New Delhi.
8. Kimsooja, 2008, Bottari Tricycle, Installation, used Chinese tricycle, bedcovers
and clothes, 295 x 190cm, Continua Gallery, Le Moulin. Image Courtesy: Thierry
Depagne.
9. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, undivided Bengal, late nineteenth
Century, Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery, 165 x 115cm, Stella
Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Mason, 2010, 189, Plate 5).
10. Kantha, Vishnu on a horse with eight gopis, detail, maker unknown, nineteenth
century, undivided Bengal, 95cm square, cotton plain weave with cotton
embroidery, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia. 1994-148-705. (Mason,
2010, 185).
11. Natasha Narain, 2016, Inself, kantha painting, acrylic, mixed media and collage
on canvas.
7
12. Natasha Narain, 2015, Performative presentation of Kantha, H.P. University,
Simla. India. Image courtesy: Kesang Youdon.
13. Natasha Narain, 2014. Artist in residence at Logan Village Library, as part of
community engagement, W.O.R.D.S. “Homesickness Project”, Mentors: Kevin
Leong & Elizabeth Woods. Image Credit: Kevin Leong.
14. Natasha Narain, 2013-2016, detail of collage from three kantha paintings.
15. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kalpa Vriksha, Kantha painting, oil, mixed media
and collage on un-stretched canvas, 180 x 100cm, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
16. Natasha Narain, 2016. Excerpts. Curated by Mark Webb, The Block, QUT. Image
Courtesy: QUT Creative Industries Faculty.
17. Natasha Narain, 2015, Body, kantha painting, oil, collage and mixed media on
un-stretched canvas,175 x 100cm. Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
18. (18A). Natasha Narain, 2016. Kantharsis, detail, kantha painting. Acrylic and
mixed media, collage on unframed canvas. H 90cm L 90 cm. (18B). Natasha
Narain, 2016, Kantharsis, detail.
19. (19A). Natasha Narain, 2011-2014, My Family Tree, (early stage resembling a
kantha), employing applique, collage, stitch, mixed media on un-stretched
canvas. 180 x 100cm.Image Credit: Carl Warner. (19B). Natasha Narain, 2011-
2014, My Family Tree, completed kantha painting, 180x100cm. Acrylic, collage,
stitch and mixed media on un-stretched canvas, clipped onto painted wooden
board. 180 x 100cm. Image Credit: Carl Warner.
20. Natasha Narain, 2010-2016, Doll Goddesses, various, singular, in test
installations & together.
21. (21A). Natasha Narain, 2016. Mapping Nurture, Central Shrine, Frank Moran
Gallery. Image Credit: Carl Warner. (21B). Natasha Narain, 2016. Mapping
Nurture. The Dolls rested at Night on the cloth I worked on during the day. (21C)
Natasha Narain, 2016, Dolls, detail, various, Mapping Nurture, Image Courtesy:
Carl Warner.
22. Natasha Narain, a doll as a photograph, collaged into a My Family Tree kantha
painting. Image Credit: Karen Milder.
23. Natasha Narain, 2016, Prayer wheels, painted kantha on canvas, doll parts,
installed for Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image Credit: Carl Warner.
24. (24A). Natasha Narain, 2006-2016, Prayer Wheels, mixed media on wood,
canvas and doll parts, as an Installation for Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran
Gallery, Image credit: Carl Warner. (24B) in Excerpts, curated by Mark Webb,
The Block, QUT, Brisbane, Image Credit: Creative Industries Faculty.
25. Natasha Narain, 2014, Unhallowed, artist’s book, mixed media on found book,
Installation on found chair, Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image
Credit: Carl Warner.
8
26. Natasha Narain, 2013-2014, Womb, Artist’s Book, detail, mixed media, collage,
stitch, on found book. H 22cm, L 16cm.
27. Natasha Narain, 2012-2015, Mother and Passage to India, Artist’s Books, mixed
media, collage and stitch on found books. (Mother: H20cm L12cm D 5 cm.
Passage to India: H 22cm, L 16cm, D 10cm). Image Credit: Carl Warner.
28. Natasha Narain, 2016, Installation, Kantha paintings, dolls, prayer wheels,
Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
29. Natasha Narain, 2016, Images from Mapping Nurture: Frank Moran Gallery.
Image Credit: Carl Warner.
30. Natasha Narain, 2016, Nadine’s Dress. Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery.
Image Credit: Carl Warner.
31. (31A). Natasha Narain, 2015-2016. D Test Installations at H and Z Block and
(31B). Images from my Studio at QUT.
32. Natasha Narain, 2016, Central Shrine, Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran
Gallery.QUT. Brisbane.
33. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kashmir, detail from final stage, kantha painting, oil,
mixed media, stitch and collage on unframed canvas. 180 x 100 cm.
34. Natasha Narain, 2015, Kantha paintings unrolled and made accessible, Nine
Schools of Art, New Delhi. Image Credit: Samudra Kajal Saikia.
35. Natasha Narain, 2016. Images of the cotton sheet, drawn on during Mapping
Nurture.
9
Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for
an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and
belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person
except where due reference is made.
Signature:
Date: 5 September 2017
10
Acknowledgements
My wholehearted thanks to Dr Courtney Pedersen (Principal Supervisor) and Dr Leah
King-Smith (Associate Supervisor) for their guidance, unfailing support, help with editing and
memorable conversations. I thank Dr Majena Mafe, as a mentor who realigned my path and Dr
Daniel Mafe, who guided me on the methodology of practice-led research.
I gratefully acknowledge the financial and material support from QUT Equity and
Creative Industries Production Support Scheme. The final write up was on a laptop arranged
by the wonderful C.I. HDR Staff. The exhibition at Frank Moran Gallery would not have been
possible without the friendly and professional support from the technical staff who helped
prepare, install and light the works and the curatorial expertise of Dr Pedersen. Mr Mark Webb
further extended this support by the generous inclusion of my works into the QUT Excerpts
Show.
I am grateful for the opportunities to engage with wider academic and artistic
communities that this research has opened up for me: both the feedback received, and
friendships formed. I thank Dr Neelima Kanwar for the invitation to write for publication. My
thanks for the generous gift of books and access to knowledge of contemporary Indian art made
possible by FICA: Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi. My thanks to Mr Kevin Leong and Dr
Elizabeth Woods, for the learning offered by the Homesickness project.
Nurtured by the meaningful conversations and companionship of Chryszanty and Karen,
I am deeply appreciative of their unwavering emotional support. Concurrently, saddened by
the loss of close friends, Nadine and Tojo: their memories keep them near.
I owe the legacy of Kantha, to my mother Mrs Snigdha Narain, ailing but stoic-as we
mourn the recent loss of my Papa, Brigadier Gautam Narain. Every mark on a painting and
word on paper is owed to their love and their faith in goodness and in service. I thank my
parents for their gifts of resilience, integrity and prayer. My sincere thanks to my kind brother,
Vikrant and dear cousins, Alok, Arjun, Neha, Rajat, Surabhi and Tanushree. My pranams also
to Rama Buajee, Shobha and Savitha Chacheejee and dear Putlu Mashi, for lovingly blessing
my journey. Humbled by the selflessness of care given by Harkajit Rai to my parents and my
family: to him I remain indebted.
Blessed by the love I so wholeheartedly receive from my dear son Jason and the joy of
seeing him grow into a responsible & caring young man: our own math, music and history
whiz. May the love of friends and family and his love of music, keep him in abundance.
Finally, I am grateful for the flexibility offered by my employer, Commonwealth Bank
of Australia, to pursue my talents and to continue being a part of a caring team and the
wonderful community at Paddington and Kenmore. Thank you all, so much.
11
Chapter 1: Introduction
This exegesis is the written component of my practice led research that seeks an
intermingling of traditional stitch-based practice with contemporary and hybrid art practices.
Both the works produced, and the contextualising artists discussed in this exegesis explore
unorthodox approaches to materials as a means to engage with narratives of loss and renewal,
on the borders of representation and abstraction. Traversing borders, whether geo-political,
temporal or through the body of the art object, my search engages with beliefs regarding the
sacred and how we may construct the sacred as reparative. Using transnational and feminist
lenses, it reflects on personal and social history and develops material and conceptual
interrelationships when the works are presented in the form of an immersive installation. This
introductory chapter outlines the background that led me to this research and the context in
which it can be placed, as well as its purposes. It describes the significance and scope of this
research and provides definitions of terms used. Finally, it includes an outline of the
remaining chapters of the thesis.
1.1 BACKGROUND
1. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kashmir, Kantha painting, detail (developing stage), oil, mixed media,
stitch and collage on unframed canvas. 180 x 100 cm.
As an Indian-Australian, having spent my life equally in both countries, I explore reflective
immersion in contemporary visual culture in my art practice, through transnational lenses.
12
This involves interweaving and opening up to multiple perspectives that are hybrid,1 but
entangled within my practice is a latent ancestral tradition that surfaces tacitly in the form of
automatic free flowing lines and marks that disorder carefully planned compositions;
subverting found books and dolls; and inhabiting interstices demanding unorthodox ways to
respond to a world in flux. My research examines this submerged and ancestral tradition as
an alternate system of knowledge rather than as a women’s folk or craft practice. It does so
by exploring women’s personal and collective history, with reference to Bengal (South Asia)
from the nineteenth century. In privileging the tacit, my central and formal inspiration has
unfolded into drawing links with the embroidery and textile-based traditional craft of the
kantha (a combination of Hindi and Bengali ‘kaan’ or ear and ‘katha’ or a recited
mythological story). Kantha becomes a portal that refers to the content, or story, and to an
intergenerational transfer of knowledge through embroidering. It also refers to the material
or form on which the narrative is placed, usually cotton sarees that have worn down and
become fragile. In the absence of art material, Bengali women transformed these soft rags
into quilted heirlooms and functional domestic items. This practice of kantha dates back to
the sixteenth century in undivided Bengal, where “both Hindu and Muslim women shared
common motifs and narratives, and quilts were made from used cotton sarees, softened
against the bodies of close kin” (Mason 2010, 1).
This image contains copyright material.
2. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, undivided Bengal, nineteenth century, cotton plain weave with
cotton embroidery, 73 x 72.4cm. Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Mason, 2010. 203.
Plate 20). Accession number: 1968-184-12.http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/2010/364.html
1 Hybrid as defined by The Oxford English Dictionary is anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or
composed of different or incongruous elements.
13
Explanation of Terms:
Durga: Formidable battle queen with many arms, she rides a fierce lion or at times, a tiger,
symbolising control over the threat posed to family and livestock by the Bengal tiger: Durga
defeats Mahisa, the buffalo demon. Over time, Durga has assumed domestic characteristics
as the wife of Siva: Parvati, and is linked to crops and to fertility (Kinsley, 1998, 95).
Saraswati: Vedic river goddess praised for her ability to cleanse and to fertilize. Also, the
goddess of speech, poetic inspiration and learning. Identified with the dimension of reality
that is best described as coherent intelligibility and as creative sound. Worshipped throughout
India as the patron goddess of learning (Kinsley, 1998, 55).
Puranas: compendium of myth, ritual, and history, originally only in Sanskrit spoken by the
Brahmins, later also-in vernacular languages (Doniger, 2015, 701). The Puranas contain
legends of the goddesses and the word Purana in Hindi means, from an earlier time.
Kobhar: drawings made by women from the matriarchal society of Mithila (located in Bihar:
India and the Madhesh belt of Nepal). A kobhar can be the marriage proposal on paper, the
drawings done on papier-mache baskets or the transformation of the room where the bride
will receive her husband, as also, a labour room and a space for the critically ill. By drawing
various protective deities, patterns, floral and animal motifs, the space is activated and
protected from destructive evil forces (Vequaud, 1977, 17-19).
1.2 CONTEXT
I wanted to know what the technique of kantha, as a practice-led reconnection with tradition
through contemporary lenses, had to offer both contemporary art practice and the process of
accounting for unidentified feelings of loss. Initially, the absence of first-hand contact with
works or even to practitioners of kantha due to significant distance from both place and
language, created a gap in my own knowledge that was partly remedied by accessing images
and literature through published sources. While this helped me to visualise the lives of my
maternal ancestors, it also made apparent my own heterodoxy and disconnection from some
of the narratives depicted. This compelled me to reread my own history and religion to
appreciate their impact on gender and cultural identity, and to recognise their inherent value
14
pattern. I sought women’s perspectives, both those depicted and those repressed. This was
substantiated by a growing appreciation of the practices of Fiona Hall, Kimsooja and Arpita
Singh, for their methods of negotiating the boundaries of legitimized narrative in a shared
search for meaning within an imperfect world.
1.3 PURPOSE
The objective of this research was to explore how kantha could be reconsidered as a
contemporary and productive working method in the context of cultural dislocation and rapid
social change. My choice to be an artist is synchronic with my historical position as one of
the last holders of the knowledge of kantha in my own family, albeit distanced from my
ancestral home and community in Ranaghat, West Bengal. I am guided by a sense of purpose
to explore and to preserve the ethos of a personal and familial practice that is capable of both
creating a community and thriving within it, while at the same time evolving my own
interdisciplinary practice, so that a new body of polyphonous work emerges. This was
shadowed by my immersion in kantha from an outsider’s position. In this context of distance,
I asked how one would make a kantha without having learnt the stitching, heard the stories
depicted, or had direct access to remaining practitioners. In a search made possible through
published sources, I sought to contribute in a way that bridged my past to my present,
drawing my personal and diasporic journey to make its own unique and emerging
contribution. This intellectual work, in tandem with creative practice, has provided a
reflective consideration of my time and place in history, and the establishment of new
methods and narratives that augment the content and vocabulary of my visual language. The
practical outcomes include new kantha paintings, a growing body of doll goddesses, artist
books, kantha-dresses as bodies, and prayer wheels, all presented together in the form of an
installation.
The significance of this creative practice research lies in its rejection of predetermined
artistic patterns for a practice usually described as folk art or craft. The process of creating
works utilising the principles and methods of kantha rather than simply copying or
replicating has contributed to correcting the current state of kantha as a craft or as a
piecemeal pre-designed product of small-scale industry in Bengal. By carrying out this
research, I have given agency back to the self-reflexive kantha practitioner in a contemporary
art context.
15
1.4 THESIS OUTLINE
This thesis engages in five interlinked areas of research, namely: the history of Bengal in the
nineteenth and twentieth century; the relevant mythology of a (South Asian) female sacred;
kantha as a self-reflexive women’s art practice; the contemporary practices of Fiona Hall,
Arpita Singh and Kimsooja; and finally, my own interdisciplinary practice.
In Chapter 2, the Contextual Review, the history and mythology underpinning kantha from
nineteenth and early twentieth century Bengal is examined to appreciate the lives of the
women who made the kanthas. This includes the establishment of Kolkata (Calcutta), the
Bengal renaissance, social history, famines, displacement, the partition of India, the
Bangladesh war of Independence. This leads to a discussion on the cessation of kantha, and
how it changes into a collectible artefact.
The second contextualising topic is loss and the maternal divine, particularly shifts that take
place in the feminine sacred as linked to the experiential reality of women and historical
events. This section covers select South Asian Goddesses, as well as Kobhar and Alpana
practices and a selected work of Nalini Malani. Thirdly, I discuss the work of three artists
whose practices echo some of my research concerns: Fiona Hall, Arpita Singh and Kimsooja.
This chapter concludes with a discussion of the practice of kantha itself and perspectives on
kantha as a living tradition and language.
In Chapter 3, I discuss my methodology and processes, including the use of practice-led and
qualitative methods to collect and test my knowledge of kantha in order to develop portable,
sustainable, narrative-driven, interdisciplinary art objects that function solely or together and
make place for a feminist approach. Collage and bricolage are discussed as approaches to
research and making.
Chapter 4 discusses the creative work arising from the project, including paintings, dolls,
installation and sound, and analyses how these relate back to my research question. Finally,
Chapter 5 summarises my research conclusions.
16
Chapter 2: Contextual Review
2.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
As no documentation exists of the origin of kantha, its history is as approximate as other
domestic and craft traditions. As Darielle Mason explains:
[Its origins] may be dated as far back as the sixteenth century, not long after the
Portuguese arrived [...] though most surviving examples date to the seventeenth century
[…] kanthas may well have been produced for personal, domestic use for many
centuries before the earliest surviving examples (Mason, 2010, 3).
The practice of kantha would be traced to a geographical location that covers current day
Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam (states within India) and its neighbour, Bangladesh. It predates
the arrival of the British East India Company and the establishment of Kolkata (Calcutta) out
of three villages in 1690 (Chakravorty & Stearns, 2008, Para, 1). This time period between
the seventeenth and early nineteenth century saw the gradual transfer of political power from
an Islamic Mughal dynasty to the colonial East India Company. It includes cultural, social,
economic and intellectual shifts, also referred to as the Bengal renaissance (Dhar, 1987, 26-
27) lasting from the nineteenth to early twentieth century. During this movement, mostly
restricted to urban centres, upper class and educated men, familiar with liberal western
thought but resistant to the spread of Christianity, turned a lens back on their own heritage to
address patriarchal rules and practices that disempowered women, such as child marriage,
Sati (immolation in the funeral pyre), and denial of education. However, while the movement
questioned existing orthodoxies, a gap existed between this intellectual exercise and the real
lives of women. Poet Rabindranath Tagore criticised the double standards adopted by men as
evidenced by the Bengali Babu2 depicted in kalighat pat paintings,3 which showed deities,
but also landlords and the new clerical middle class continuing in their oppressive and
orthodox ways. Meanwhile in rural Bengal, absentee landlords increased taxation. Land was
given over to the cultivation of cash crops such as indigo, cotton, poppy and jute (instead of
2 Bengali Babu: “Babu was an honorific form of address for the Bengali elite, but in the nineteenth century it
also gained currency as a term of derision of certain men: pleasure seekers spending their new wealth, or
pampered sons their inherited wealth, on drinking and other amusements” (Hacker, 2010, 66) 3 Kalighat pat: Early nineteenth century, swiftly painted souvenirs on cloth made by pat painters for pilgrims
visiting the Kali temple near Calcutta. They were carried all over Bengal, and even made into lithograph prints.
17
rice) and this, along with the failure of rain, led to catastrophic shortage of food and the
famine of 1770 (Gunn, 2009, 83-87).
The upheavals continued when the transportation of indentured labour from Bihar and Bengal
to the Pacific and the Caribbean began from 1834 (Anderson, 2009, 93, 99, 101). Clare
Anderson explains that even though slavery had been officially abolished:
In nineteenth-century India, there was a close association between convict
transportation and indentured migration, discursively, institutionally, and imaginatively.
[…] indenture was a ‘new system of slavery’ […] colonial administrators used
established penal practices in formulating procedures surrounding recruitment,
identification, and embarkation. […] Absolutely central to Indian understandings of
indenture were beliefs that both transportation and migration invoked social rupture and
permanent loss. Convicts, migrants, and their communities were deeply affected by the
absence that transportation and indenture produced. (These processes of) social removal
and dislocation thus became sites of subaltern anxiety and the circulation of rumour and
speculation (Anderson, 2009, 104).
Tied as it was to the lives of women in rural areas, the practice of kantha was further
impacted by the famine of 1943, when torrential rain, cyclone, administrative
underestimation of food requirements, and the destruction of rice crops in Burma to
discourage Japanese advancement into the region further aggravated the shortfall in Bengal.
Starvation led to mass influx of the rural destitute to Calcutta. Official policy insured “the
maintenance of essential food supplies to the industrial area of Calcutta must be ranked on a
very high priority […] [so] masses of rural destitute trekked from the districts into the city: by
July 1943 the streets were full.” (Sen, 1977, 37-38). Poverty, growing unrest and nationalism
led to the 1947 partition of British India into India and Pakistan (Bengal was divided into
Indian West Bengal and East Pakistan). The partition resulted in disastrous displacement
from communal riots (Butalia, 2000, 1-20) (Mukherjee J, 2011, 6-14) (Mukherjee M, 2011,
1-3).
Curiously, these catastrophic events are largely missing from kantha decoration. This
contradiction, between reality and the imagery depicted on kanthas may suggest their
production during a more peaceful time, or that once kanthas had begun to be sold they
became displaced from ancestral place and family, just as their makers themselves
experienced social change and displacement. Yet the conspicuous absence of the abject and
of extremities of experience in these depictions may also allude to societal silencing of
shame, loss and an avoiding of the impure. Conversely, this marginalisation of women’s
everyday experiences in works made by women, on one hand maintained kanthas as sacred
18
This image contains copyright material.
3. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, Undivided Bengal, nineteenth century, Cotton plain weave with
cotton embroidery, 97.8 x 94 cm, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Mason, 2010, 216,
plate 34). Accession number: 1994-148-704.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/88617.html?mulR=1901423883%7C37
talismans and magical wraps. But, this erasure if seen as a containment, constrained a living
tradition because there was so much that could not be depicted, linked as it was to trauma, to
shame and the silenced within women’s lives. My research considers how ideas of restitution,
reparation and making ‘whole’ could help mend and make meaning from that which has
become unsayable, or made lives seem meaningless. As explained by Mason:
The partition of 1947 was accompanied by an enormous displacement of people and
destruction of property, and it dramatically altered domestic life on both sides of the
border, changing, if not destroying many local craft traditions. […] this dislocation of
women seems to have been the major factor in the decline of embroidered kanthas,
particularly those with elaborate narrative imagery (Mason, 2010, 15).
The resulting social upheaval of this period required kantha to operate as economic
commodities aiding their makers’ survival. Kanthas’ continuance is owed to its collectors,
while paradoxically this has mostly removed kanthas from its origins in Bengal and restricted
how many can be seen in the first hand or touched and kept within family.
19
The nineteenth century also saw a search for spiritual solutions amidst oppressive social and
religious practices, and a renewed interest in ancient knowledge such as the texts of the
Upanishads. Philosophy that sought liberation through a connection with a universal soul or a
spirit that imbued all creation, such as the Upanishadic Brahman, was ascendant. This was
reflected in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and in the reading of kantha from pan-Indic
perspectives (as opposed to a local lens) by its major collector and Indologist, Dr Stella
Kramrisch. Kramrisch was fascinated with Hindu narrative imagery and this influenced her
approach to collecting. However, early nineteenth century rural Bengal was secluded still
from nationalist/ divisive politics and there were many similarities in lived experiences,
material culture and shared beliefs of Muslim and Hindu women, such as respect for an
Islamic / Sufi Satya Pir alongside a Hindu Satya Narayana that led to overlaps in motifs and
imagery. As evidenced through “a kantha which has the richest Hindu narrative imagery,
including the Ramayana battle, (but) shares the surface with a roundel bearing the Arabic
inscription Ya Allah, the Muslim invocation of God’s name” (Mason 2010, 15).
Kramrisch organised in 1968 an exhibition, Unknown India: Ritual Art in Tribe and Village
at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that travelled on to San Francisco and St Louis and in
doing so legitimized folk art by placing it in a Fine Arts museum. However, as Katherine
Hacker explains:
Kramrisch’s show functioned simultaneously within domains of inclusion and
exclusion: inserted into the canon of aesthetic objects but contained as so-called
traditional or ritual arts, fixing indigenous cultures in traditional mode (Hacker, 2000,
11-14). [She further explains]. Within the context of India, ‘tribe’ was introduced in the
mid-nineteenth century as an administrative and ideological category. The dual efforts
of colonial administrators and ethnographers to know and control India’s different
peoples by imposing a classificatory system (that) established artificially static,
bounded categories, most notably the hierarchal caste/ egalitarian tribal dichotomy
(Hacker, 2000, 5).
A contemporary of Kramrisch, Gurusaday Dutt (1882-1941) was a civil servant who travelled
extensively throughout Bengal and collected kanthas that are now housed in a museum
named after him in Kolkata. Dutt saw kantha both as a folk tradition and as a method of self-
determination by rural and vernacular practitioners that was emblematic of their participation
in a growing nationalist discourse –but in a manner that was different to both urban and
modern methods.
20
This image contains copyright material.
4. Kantha, detail, maker unknown, Jessore District, undivided Bengal, nineteenth century, cotton plain
weave with cotton embroidery, 88.9 x 81.3cm, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
(Mason, 2010, 207, plate 24). Accession number: 1994-148-679.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/88588.html?mulR=7613%7C6
As explained by Hacker:
Although he argued for a deep continuity with the past, he also insisted upon a rupture
and discontinuity with the urban present [This] dichotomy of tradition and modernity [is]
a false opposition that positions tradition as unchanging in contrast with modernity as
exemplifying progress, innovation and change (Hacker, 2010, 60, 64).
Also associated with kantha is the practice of alpana, which both Kramrisch and Dutt
recognised as, linked to kantha. Alpana consists of designs painted on the ground using
pulverised rice, and is associated with Vrata rituals, mostly “life cycle events, especially
marriage rituals and celebrations surrounding birth and early childhood, such as the first
consumption of rice, entailed their own alpanas.” (Mason, 2010, 6). In the spirit of
educational reform, Rabindranath Tagore set up Visva Bharati (communion of the world with
India) and a department of Fine Art (Kala Bhawan, my alma mater) in rural Santiniketan in
21
1921. As an acknowledgement of indigenous and marginal practices, alpana was encouraged
but it was ‘cleansed’ of all ritual connotations. According to Mason:
At Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati University, […] Alpana was transformed by
highly trained artists into a decorative art form used in celebrations but deliberately
stripped of devotional and appellate functions (Mason, 2010, 27).
This historical background is to help clarify the gap between the intellectual meaning making,
reformist or restorative efforts, and the voice of the practitioner. Where catastrophic changes
and famines deeply affected the lived experience of women, these events also effected the
cessation of kantha as a self-reflexive creative practice. Concurrently, celebrations and rituals
were a part of women’s lives, but were subsumed into the metanarratives of political history,
and family history was often eroded by mass displacement. Additionally, over a period of
nine months from March to December 1971, the Bangladesh war of Independence from the
military rule of (West) Pakistan witnessed the rape of 300,000 women in a strategic attempt
to target Bengali ethnic identity (D’Costa, 2012.19). The women were later referred to as
Birangona or war heroes, but this did not erase the social stigma, or the avoidance of victims
as reminders of shame and led to the silencing of extremities of experiences to become
deeply held secrets: a loss akin to a spectral wound (Mookherjee, 2015, p. 15-16).
After the formation of Bangladesh, a revival of Bengali language and cultural practices,
encouraged the revival of Kantha (Mason, 2010, 18-20). Whilst this made it possible for
women to earn a livelihood- it reduced kantha to becoming a functional design item and
encouraged a replication of historical examples as a form of continuation of tradition.
Consequently, kanthas from the nineteenth and early twentieth century have been ascribed
symbolic meanings, or placed into categories dependent on use such as a handkerchief, a mat,
a wrap and so on, but with inconsistent documentation of the maker, time or place of origin.
Examining historical examples of kantha against its historical background has helped me to
see the unsaid within women’s lives and to strengthen my understanding of South Asian
feminism4. Consequently, I have chosen to keep away from superficial topicality and
didacticism in my own creative work.
4 While an overview of South Asian feminism is beyond the scope of this research, practitioners and thinkers
whose work is crucial in this area include Urvashi Butalia, Veena Das, Anita Dube, Chadra Talpade Mohanty,
Nalini Malani, Nayanika Mookherjee and Arpita Singh.
22
2.2 LOSS AND THE MATERNAL DIVINE
The Sacred Feminine
For the purposes of this research I am using Amy Peck’s definition of the sacred feminine:
The Sacred Feminine is a paradigm of Universal Motherhood. It is a principle that
embraces concepts of the Holy Mother, the Goddesses of ancient mythologies, the
angelic realms, the Divine Self within, Mother Earth doctrines and lore of indigenous
peoples. It is a spiritual model that weaves concepts of wisdom, compassion and
unconditional love, plus other metaphysical, shamanic, pagan and magical practices.
And it is a principle that returns the lost knowledge from prehistoric matri-focal
societies around the world to contemporary application and appreciation. The Sacred
Feminine paradigm restores the balance of the spiritual, cultural, and pragmatic
relationship between Feminine/Masculine, Mother/Father, Women/Men and Earth
Spirit ideals (Peck in Tate 2014, 15).
My consideration of the seemingly inexplicable contradictions within what is considered
sacred and how it may be constructed is informed by my experiences from having spent years
living in India, the U.K and Australia. If the sacred is a veneration, a valuing or respecting, I
acknowledge boundaries within my heritage as well as all other beliefs that deny women and
their bodies the opportunity to feel or access the sacred. On one hand, by disrespecting or
violating their bodies, or by denigrating their metaphysical and potentially reparative
practices as magical and profane. Especially as domestic violence and various forms of abuse
continue behind closed doors in both my ‘home countries’ and elsewhere, and silence muffles
miscarriage and/or termination. Therefore, in my creative work, I ask if an art practice can
serve as an agent of partial reparation and of some restitution by consciously making the
sacred in a contemporary context.
5. Natasha Narain, 2013-2015, Ivory and S.W.M.I., photographic reproduction of dress as a body and doll as a
deity. (Where S.W.M.I. stands for she will / will not make it).
23
Religious and mythological gods and goddesses are relevant to their time in history.
For instance, Sita, the long-suffering wife of Rama, was born from the earth in Mithila and
returned to it, tired from having to prove her chastity and virtue to her husband. Sita remains
the aspirational ideal of a virtuous wife in Mithila. Often depicted on kanthas, is Goddess
Durga. As explained by Mason:
The rise of Durga and Kali, both martial goddesses believed to have been created from
the combined energies of male gods otherwise unable to defeat Mahisasur5 “may assert
their ascendency in elite urban circles in the nineteenth century [and] their shifting roles
as the nascent nation began to be imagined as a mother goddess rising to crush the
demon of colonialism” (Mason, 2010, 82).
Kanthas depicted narratives that resemble the sculpted reliefs on Bengali terracotta temples
and tales from recitations of Devi Mahatamya, which honours Durga, and is recited during
her festival (in October, this ran concurrently with my show). Durga is an embodiment of
Shakti: a primordial force that restores balance in the world. As Doniger explains:
It remained for the Puranas to tell of a goddess who killed the antigods herself. Such a
goddess, first under the name of Chandika (‘the fierce”), later often called Durga
(“Hard to get”), bursts into the Sanskrit scene full grown […] in a complex myth, that
includes a hymn of a thousand names. Many of the names allude to entire mythological
episodes that must have grown onto the goddess, like barnacles onto a great ship,
gradually for centuries. The founding text is “The glorification of the Goddess” (Devi
Mahatamya) […], which also tells a number of other stories about powerful women and
goddesses between the fifth and seventh centuries of the Common Era. […] a
compilation of many earlier texts about the goddess, either from other, lost Sanskrit
texts or from lost or never preserved vernacular sources, in Magadhi or Tamil, perhaps.
Some of the stories may have come from villages or tribal cultures where the goddess
had been worshipped for centuries: early in her history she may have been associated
with the periphery of society,” tribal or low-caste peoples who worshipped her in wild
places. Yet by the time of the Markandeya Purana (250 CE and 550 CE), goddesses
were worshipped in both cities and villages, by people all along the economic spectrum
(Doniger, 2015, 388).
Kanthas from the nineteenth century also depict the blue god Krishna, in narratives that
depict his consort Radha awaiting his arrival whether in isolation or with her servants. These
5 Mahisasur: Buffalo chief of the ‘Asuras’ or tribal anti gods, skilled in magical prowess, was granted a boon
to be invincible to all opponents except a woman. He defeated the Brahmannical gods who then assembled and
emitted their fiery energies to create Durga as the resolver and superior warrior. Mahisasur is usually shown as
an antigod emerging out of a buffalo’s open mouth, and is slain by Durga after a long battle. (Kinsley, 1998,
96-97 and Doniger, 2015, 389).
24
narratives are usually seen as romantic interludes, but they are also examples of the affluence
and isolation of mostly upper class married women. Pika Ghosh explains:
Literary works of the period also describe escalating familial stresses and the isolation
of women, particularly of the upper classes, while their husbands turned to the
adventures offered in the flourishing brothels of the thriving metropolis. Radha’s lot
was likewise mixed. While she enjoyed Krishna’s special attention, she was often
betrayed and angered as he strayed to other women. Ultimately, Krishna left her,
entering the next stage of life to become a king and the husband of another woman
(Ghosh, 2010, 91).
Manasa, or Mana Devi, as the serpent goddess of Bengal, is worshipped in the rainy season
to protect against snake bite and she appears on many kanthas and pat paintings as a snake or
as a water pot (usually left on the threshold, with milk, to appease snakes and to keep them
from entering the household). In oral renditions, Manasa is identified as being of mixed
parentage (part Adivasi/ tribal/ subaltern and Siva’s daughter, but one that he lusted after).
Manasa had to fight to be accepted as a Hindu goddess and is considered ferocious towards
those who do not accord her due status. Finally, Doniger explains,
General considerations of the relationship between myth and history operate here. The
myths reflect attitudes toward women rather than the actual history of real women, but
they also influence the subsequent actual history of real women (Doniger, 2015, 378-
379).
This image contains copyright material.6. Maker: Dhanapati, Kantha, detail, Goddess Chandi. Nineteenth century,
Faridpur District, Bengal. 165 x103cm, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia, (Mason, 2010, 188, plate 4).
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/114206.html?mulR=46415534%7C26
25
As religious narratives permit the co-existence of human with superhuman and normal with
fantastical, in my work I transform rejected and donated dolls and dresses into cross cultural
goddesses. They reappear in my paintings as collaged photographs and playfully install
themselves on prayer wheels, gradually building new narratives and a personal relationship.
These dolls and their dioramas explore what Green refers to as:
A key element in modern feminist studies of the Goddess is the concept of
revitalization and reconstruction, the desire for a reorientation of culture towards the
centrality of the female. […] female sprits were responsible also for the fertility and
general well-being of their worshippers: they provided them with spiritual refreshment,
and guided them in life, cherishing them in the grave and beyond (Billington and
Green, 1996, 2).
Divinity from feminist and psychic perspectives is explored in the works of contemporary
artist, Nalini Malani. In a compelling five channel video ‘Mother India: Transactions in the
construction of pain’ exhibited in Sydney (Nalini Malani, 2005), the artist utilises multiple
screens to present a range of images that envelop the viewer within a fifteen-metre space,
demanding an emotional and visceral connection. The screens show nationalist narratives,
Hindu images of divinities such as Durga riding a lion, calm domesticated women, the holy
cow- alongside communal violence and devastation. Displaced teeth coincide with the
inscribing of topographical details and place names on skin, (as marks of ownership by the
perpetrator and a perpetual reminder of loss, for the victim). This work links the riots of the
Partition (1947) to Gujarat (2002) and raises questions on the contradictions between the
sacred role of women as mothers and home makers (maternal divine) to some being defiled
and silenced.
My interest in my own cultural heritage’s female sacred and my experience of the
transnational status of women come together in my practice in the form of an ongoing
exploration of goddess mythology, to find connections with a living tradition and ways of
making meaning that my ancestors also employed.
2.3 CONTEXTUAL PRACTICES: ARTISTS
In this section, I will briefly discuss the work of three established women artists whose works
examine history and material culture and offer unique examples that provide a context for my
own practice.
26
Fiona Hall
I am drawn to Fiona Hall’s Leaf Litter (2001) and Tender (2003-2005) series made on
currency notes because they reference the impact of colonisation and globalisation on the
natural environment, including history that is shared between Australia, Sri Lanka, India and
Bangladesh (but is not limited to these countries).
Both nature and the colonised became economic resources and something exotic to be
captured in detailed drawings and engravings of the nineteenth century. However, in these
two series, Hall inverts this tradition by using mimesis as a form of atonement by privileging
nature and humanity over colonisation and commerce. Hall achieves this through her detailed
observation and exacting aesthetic representation. Her observations of the many different
types of bird nests to suit the needs of different birds are evidenced by her shredding and
repurposing of currency notes into eighty-six different nests (Tender). Similarly, Hall
transfers her understanding of the variety and complexity of the many species of leaves by
drawing them in exacting detail onto currency notes (Leaf Litter). Admittedly, Hall’s
confident subversion of currency notes was perhaps possible due to her position as an artist
from an economically powerful nation (Australia), residing in a prestigious and nurturing
creative environment made possible by the Lunagunga Trust in Sri Lanka. In a deeply
committed and longstanding engagement spread over years of practice, colonial economics,
nature, art, loss and nurture intersect.
Hall describes Tender as inspired by her “wonder, fascination and respect for what birds can
achieve [and their] social architecture.” and explains how the title suggests nurture but also,
‘American legal tender’ (QAGOMA YouTube video 2010). Hall’s subversive destruction of
the notes by shredding and slicing reduces, (questions the value or devalues) the currency
into a raw material. These strips are assembled into nests in a manner that acknowledges the
dexterity and ingenuity displayed by birds. However, the nests remain abandoned and
silenced within a cabinet placed inside a building where birds cannot enter. This interest in
transforming the manufactured to resemble nature and in doing so to make meaning can also
be seen in Hall’s exquisite sardine can plants (Paradisus terrestris, 1999).
In Leaf Litter, Hall’s decision to draw a detailed leaf on an existing and used surface (note),
reminds me of the methods employed by a kantha practitioner: a juxtaposition emerges as the
27
leaf is centrally drawn (veritably sewn) mark by mark (stitch by stitch) onto the surface,
drawing links to existing images that underpin the drawing and the new leaf becomes the
hero growing in stature and making its presence known, privileging nature and nurture over
environmental loss for economic gain.
As Linda Michael, curator of Hall’s Wrong Way Time at the National Gallery of Australia
(2016) and the Venice Biennale (2015), explains, “[Hall’s practice] brings together hundreds
of diverse materials and images to explore three intersecting concerns: global politics, world
finances and the environment” (Michael, 2016, 4).
Also exhibited at this Biennale were Hall’s works on Tapa or Tongan bark cloth (titled Fools
Gold) from her expedition to New Zealand’s Kermadec Trench, in 2011. Adhering to colours
obtained from natural dyes: brown, black, orange, deep red, cream: large, portable, painted
works bear resemblance to the patterns and grids of a traditional Tapa, but are transformed
into emotive narratives of loss and destruction. (Reminiscent also, of the cataclysmic imagery
of Hall’s Inferno series of the 1980s). Hall activates the surface of her Moat (2011) Tapa with
energetic lines, allowing paint to drip, mutating white borders into rows of sharp teeth,
catching predatory sharks within nets, whilst ships become mining vessels that diagonally cut
across the space (traversing boundaries) and take centre stage. A variety of marine and bird
life are shown entangled within nets, as are skulls, coral and dynamite. Employing text such
as “No Hope” or scattering the letters for “I [a] m not scared” or “Trench warfare”: the work
retains a powerful visual appeal further enhanced by a variety of lines. At times confident and
aggressive while at other times soft, as in the delicate cross hatching of fishing nets. Salt
water shimmers alongside detailed observations from the natural world and Hall brings an
immediacy to the environmental catastrophe unfolding on the sea: as also on her Tapa.
Bearing seeds for how a tradition is respectfully rejuvenated and its methods extended to
express urgent contemporary concerns. Evidencing how a sensitive artist can help to
reactivate a sacred tradition that they have not been born into. While this privilege to absorb
from other cultures bears historical precedence in Western art history as linked to
colonisation, Hall allows a plurality and sensitivity that speaks for nature, the environment
and the colonised. Hall also addresses the loss of cultural heritage and language (tapa) and
attempts a restitution by rejuvenating the Tapa into a contemporary visual medium.
28
Arpita Singh
Born in 1937 in Bengal, Singh moved to Delhi in 1946, where she witnessed a man being
killed as communal violence escalated and continued into the 1947 partition of India (Datta
2014, 6). This violence has ebbed and surged, but its threats have entered into bodies and
domestic spaces in India over the last seventy years. It has also been expressed through the
works of Singh’s contemporaries Nalini Malani and Nilima Sheikh. Singh’s exploration of
this content in a manner that is non-didactic has evolved over time. Her early works were
abstract with lines and geometrical forms (Untitled, oil on canvas, 1961) potentially linked to
her mentor Biren De’s work. Singh introduced dark domestic spaces, objects, bodily presence
as eyes (Whether it is violet or yellow, 1970) and marks resembling kantha stitches in
increasingly layered surfaces that privileged narrative storytelling. Her compositional
arrangements intersected between Indian miniature painting, western realism and a kantha.
Her drawings are described by Ella Datta as:
diverse forms – complex constructs representing man-made grids, elements from
nature, mesh-like lines evoking weaves of fabrics […] dense, shadowy, stage-like
backgrounds out of which emerged sinuous shapes. Arpita’s lines are impassioned,
exuberant, dynamic and often aggressive. Unusual experimentations like perforations,
scratching’s on paper with needles, scissors, and blades were done (Datta, 2014, 10).
Singh contemplates her place in the world in a manner that permits darkness, conflict, fear
and vulnerability to be represented. She usually places a woman’s body, whether
autobiographical or that of a goddess, facing their own subjective traumas at the centre. In
Devi (1999), a widow in white is armed with fruits, a gun aimed at a Babu, and (like Kali) her
feet are shown resting on her male partner while birds nonchalantly fly overhead. Identical
looking men in black coats and white pants (My lollipop city, 2005) or in military uniforms
and holding guns (My lily pond, 2009) invade pictorial space, resembling schematic stamps
repeatedly pressed onto the body of a canvas strewn with surrendering bodies of women and
layered over by text as form, as mark and as meaning. As a witness to conflicts of her time
(e.g. The Golden deer, 2004 and Whatever is here, 2006), Singh explores perspectives of fear,
frailty and interiority as expressed through an inward, withdrawn but contemplative gaze
(Woman smoking, 2005), and in x-ray-like representations of the inside of a woman’s body
(The river project, 2007). Similar to a kantha practitioner, Singh depicts observations from
her everyday: airplanes, cars, flowers, birds, ducks, goats, cats, domestic objects such as a
29
pedestal fan, or a frilly edged pillow, undergarments, even a table set for tea. In doing so,
Singh honours the interrelationships between minor and metanarratives that together form the
worldview of a practitioner.
This image contains copyright material.
7. Arpita Singh, 2006, Whatever is here, oil on canvas, 214 x 275cm.
Exhibited: 2014, Other narratives - Other structures, Lalit Kala Akademi. Vadehra Art Gallery Collection, New
Delhi.
http://www.vadehraart.com/arpita-singh-other-narratives-other-structure/
Singh also employs text as it appears in newspapers and on packaging to activate the surface
of works, adding meaning and allowing text to become a pattern. I see this as similar to
kantha stitches that quilt and connect disparate parts together (see Ocean dream, 2011 and
From time to time, 2012). This compositional complexity with no breathing space is
sometimes contradicted by open space around a figure so that some paintings resemble an
Indian miniature painting (The Moth, 2013). However, Singh intentionally eludes meanings,
avoids linear progression, employs intricacy of line and allows colours to become
empowering agents that make the world beautiful again – but where beauty includes ageing,
disease, loss, and politics. Her colours remain fresh and alluring in a manner similar to a
kantha, and motifs and symbols bring playful cheer as ducks, airplanes, cars and buses are not
shown in their real proportional size but scaled by their significance to the story or as imagery
that enhances the story telling. Her works have a distinct sense of place (Delhi) with map-like
grids, street names and important sites marked out (My lollipop city: Gemini rising, 2005).
Singh’s work entices me with its familiarity of location, inviting me to read and recognise
30
street names and landmarks and to be absorbed by the proliferation of visual and textual
information. My eyes travel along meandering streets in search of meaning by decoding. I am
also drawn to the substantial size of the work (1.5 x 2.13m), which allows for the viewer’s
immersion. In this practice, which has evolved over fifty years, lies an ability to tell dark
stories on a monumental scale. Singh privileges women’s narratives, using unexpected motifs
like fried eggs and vulture-like birds in colours that invite hope and cleanse the darkness of
violence, but cannot eliminate it.
Kimsooja
I was captivated by an image of the Bottari (Korean bedcovers) as part of Kimsooja’s (A
Mirror Woman, 2002) reproduced in a book on Global Feminism (Kee, 2007. 114). I am
drawn to the bottaris for their rich colours and resemblance to Indian sarees, but also for the
ways by which the artist Kimsooja had extended textiles that were a part of everyday life and
cultural heritage of women into a medium of contemporary art practice. Kimsooja achieved
this without physically altering the textile (not cutting, dyeing, writing, stamping, tearing) but
by respecting its history and keeping it ‘whole’. Instead, she extends the context and meaning
through the visual arrangement of her bottari in site-specific ways and by doing so, Kimsooja
transforms spaces with her portable, colourful and soft (feminine) material. As Joan Kee
notes, “the embroidered patterns [are] a contingent presence that transform the work from an
object to an occurrence” (Kee 2007, 114). Presented as installations and not as cultural
objects behind glass or as folk art, the bottaris retain their own meanings but also invoke
existential concerns. The works allude to practices of nurture through tedious women’s work
such as wrapping, storing in bundles, placing, arranging, or hanging on a line (A Mirror
Woman, 2002; Conditions of Humanity, 2004; various bundles of Bottari from 2004 to 2014),
or evince loss and displacement by disorder and by leaving undone (Deductive Object, 1993).
The bottaris huddle together like refugees in trucks (Cities on the move, 1997), or spill
overturned from a rickshaw (Bottari Tricycle, 2008). Kimsooja’s presentation extends the
bottari from the functional to a metaphorical sphere without violent or abject means, but by
suggestion of disruption through (dis)placement. In doing so, Kimsooja creates places for
contemplation on culture, existence, women’s work and what we consider valuable.
31
This image contains copyright material.
8. Kimsooja, 2008, Bottari Tricycle, Installation, used Chinese tricycle, bedcovers and clothes, 295 x 190cm,
Continua Gallery, Le Moulin. Image Courtesy: Thierry Depagne.
Kimsooja also extends ideas of ‘stitching’ in her video works, where her silent body
symbolically connects places and people who would otherwise have never met (A
needlewoman, 2005). This reminds me of a kantha way of seeing interconnectedness and that
the stitch does not need to be literal. She posits stillness as a form of resilience that may
restore wholeness and strength by not permitting external forces to puncture a bottari or her
own body. She simultaneously confirms stitching as being a silent and contemplative process.
Kimsooja has embraced technological solutions whereby the bottari transcends cloth and is
transformed as colour, form and light, creating a meditative and dialogical environment,
evolving into a new form that is hybrid, digital and contemporary (e.g. To Breathe, 2015 and
Thread Routes, 2015).
In conclusion, these three artists’ ways of approaching narrative, surface, and intercultural
communication have significantly informed my own reinterpretation of the complex kantha
tradition, which forms the basis for my creative practice research.
2.4 TRADITIONS OF KANTHA
As previously discussed, the hardships faced by the rural poor would have no doubt
encouraged a need for restitution of all available material. Rural women had long spun the
thread that weavers wove into cloth, which when too thin was then refashioned into kanthas.
In this way, kanthas invoked the reassuring touch of many hands and alternated between
32
restorative and functional uses. Not all kanthas were made from rags however, according to
Bangladeshi academic, Niaz Zaman: “Kanthas made on fine saris only affordable to the
relatively more affluent tend to have finer workmanship. The finer the kantha, the more
exposed the maker was to art and culture” (Zaman, 2010, 117). Zaman provides a richly
crafted example where the maker identifies herself through the sewn text as Manadasundari
(she who has a beautiful mind). She describes her own work as a Sujni (not kantha).
Embroidering of text suggests literacy that empowered some women in the nineteenth
century. Zaman explains:
The word sujni, unlike “kantha”, has associations with embroidery, being derived from
the Persian term suzan, referring to needle. The term suzani, meaning ‘of needles’ or
‘embroidered’, is still used for decorative tribal textiles in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan and other central Asian countries (Zaman, 2012, 123).
The sujni kantha that was made by Manadasundari for her father of her own free will,
indicated her independent access to material, in that it was not commissioned nor was it a part
of her traditional wedding trousseau. An examination of the work on a recent visit to the
Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata, made apparent the complexity of the narrative. It also
suggested Manadasundari was a young widow, able to stay in her parental home (instead of
suffering abandonment or deprivation) which would explain her gratitude. As a highly
observant viewer and skilled embroiderer of people and events, her attention to detail such as
in noting the difference of attire between English and Indian soldiers, the liveliness of the
mendicants who visited, and her eye for colour has created a rich and telling narrative ‘with
her own hands’.
Additionally, “the finest embroidered quilts or nakshi kanthas do not seem to have come
from illiterate individuals. Some of the kanthas have inscriptions on them, occasionally in a
very fine hand” (Zaman, 2010, 117 and 119). The term nakshi derived from naksha or map, is
a word shared between Urdu, Hindi and Bengali, and is used by some practitioners to
describe their kantha.
33
This image contains copyright material.
9. Kantha, maker unknown, Faridpur District, undivided Bengal, late nineteenth Century, Cotton plain weave
with cotton embroidery, 165 x 115cm, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Mason, 2010,
189, Plate 5).
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/88594.html?mulR=3365
Mason makes a compelling argument for the cross-cultural sacred aspect of kantha when she
explains:
the corner tree motifs on kanthas […] evoke the [Hindu] temple, with its cardinal
openings […] as well as the symmetric Muslim tomb or shrine, with its central dome
[lotus] corner towers, and four cardinal iwans (vaulted openings). These architectural
parallels remind us that kanthas were created to be “read” – and in a sense to function –
as sacred spaces” (Mason, 2010, 9).
Bengali art historian, Pika Ghosh elucidates the other ways that kanthas are sacred heirlooms:
Particularized practices of using kanthas, such as for the prayer mats women use in
Dhaka homes, or for wrapping the Quran and other prayer books, and the inherent
potential for these kanthas in the transmission of spirituality, faith, and sacred
knowledge from one user to the next remains to be considered. […] kanthas can invoke
the touch of many hands, known and unknown to each owner. They can also conjure
images of many homes, and with them, imaginary homelands (Ghosh, 2010, 37).
As Ghosh points out, the “transmission of touch” is common across South Asia where
blessings or the sacred can be bestowed through fabric. Ghosh offers the example of giving a
shawl or sari to a guru to wear temporarily as evidence of this. But the intergenerational and
34
domestic aspects of kantha “take on further nuances when the continuities of use and giving
go farther back to their making and reuse of old cloth” (Ghosh, 2010, 43).
The many similarities in methods of practice, motifs and usage between Hindu and Muslim
kanthas allude to having come from the same soil or landscape, and similar patriarchal family
structures. However, what is missing from kanthas is the direct depiction of famines,
hardships, violence, rapes and displacement. Zainul Abedin, who was born in 1914 in
Mymensingh (current day Bangladesh), also collected kanthas and helped establish the Folk
Art and Crafts Museum at Sonargoan. His birthplace had once been a major producer of rice
and jute, but was devastated by the famine of 1943 followed by the partition in 1947 (Hacker,
2010, 68, 69). Abedin made ‘famine drawings from life’ of the rural communities streaming
into wartime Calcutta. Communities such as those of agricultural labourers and fishermen
depicted on kanthas and in that kanthas were often given to men who worked away from
home, as magical wraps for protection, some were sold and became collectible.
Unfortunately, amidst the historical events discussed earlier, “the majority of pieces were
either deliberately destroyed or used, repaired, and reused until they disintegrated. The
kanthas in museum and private collections in the west and in Asia, along with those that
remain in family collections in Bengal, necessarily represent only a tiny fraction of the works
made over the century” (Mason, 2010, 21). This undocumented body of kanthas by its loss
restricts our knowledge of women’s lives as in the absence of formal education; kantha was
the chosen medium of (visual) expression. With the partition of the subcontinent and the
creation of the nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947, the meaning of nationality
changed significantly. A new geography of belonging and alienation was created. Partition
uprooted ten million people (Hacker, 2010, 68). As Zaman also explains, the pressing
problems facing the new nations vastly outweighed any question of women’s art or craft and
we can see little evidence of those events in kantha:
Even Parul’s kantha, made in 1952/53, shows no signs of what happened to make many
Hindus flee East Bengal. Generally, however, the women who embroidered kanthas in
the past accepted their status in a world where a woman’s place was known, as well as
her roles as mother and child-bearer (Zaman, 2010, 130).
Problematically, kantha in India becomes a fetishized practice evoking the past in an
ideological way. As Hacker explains:
35
A renewal of kantha as emblematic of the endurance of cultural practice, or of the shilpi
or craftsperson [is] being heralded as a symbol of Indian cultural renaissance, [but with]
little critical analysis of women’s handicrafts, [alongside] the adoption of a
preservationist position [amidst the] persistence of exploitative forms of production
[and the viewing of] undivided Bengal as an utopic ideal. (Hacker, 2010, 75-76).
However, in the absence of women’s education and written records, kanthas remain the only
records of my maternal ancestors. They offer insights into their lives and worldviews, as the
embroidery can be read as their words. An examination of kantha as expressions of lived
experience amidst the major changes that affected Bengal in the nineteenth to the twentieth
century, challenges as much as it enlightens. My search has accessed exemplars through
published sources and through visiting the collection of kanthas at IGNCA in Delhi. Because
I was determined not to replicate existing works or reinstate traditional practice, I avoided
listing, copying, restoring or reproducing the variety and dexterity of stitches, studying the
origin of and type of threads used, or even the terminology for the various types of kanthas
based on their purpose and complexity. My study sought an understanding of some of the
narratives and the larger social, religious and political frameworks that effected the lives of
the practitioners. I privileged conceptual frameworks inherent within the practice and have
absorbed these into my own. This refers to practical solutions that utilised available material,
and that reflected on daily events as related to spiritual and mythological belief systems. I
studied some works more than others, looking for ways the unknown practitioner expressed
individuality and play amidst the restrictions of a socially acceptable craft practice.
Also, I looked for how the natural, the personal, the domestic and the mythological came
together in kantha and how the world of the maker was represented both temporally through
the stylisation of natural forms, birds and animals, but also as subjective, part sacred and
psychological landscapes. I welcomed densely layered and all over compositions. I enjoyed
seeing different goddesses on kanthas, many that I had never known such as Goddess Ganga
(as in the holy river) who has four arms and sits on a makara (a mythical fish-crocodile with
the trunk of an elephant). I noted social satire and dark humour, such as of a Babu carrying
his young wife or courtesan on his shoulders while pulling his frail and aged mother on a
leash (Hacker, 2010, p 67, figure 3.7), and faith as in depictions of Krishna transforming
himself into Kali, to protect Radha from humiliation.
36
This image contains copyright material.
10. Kantha, Vishnu on a horse with eight gopis, detail, maker unknown, nineteenth century, undivided Bengal,
95cm square, cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery, Stella Kramrisch Collection, Philadelphia. 1994-148-
705 (Mason, 2010, 185, plate 1).
Quirky and highly skilled depictions such as Krishna astride a horse, whose body is
composed of eight women (Mason, 2010. 89, figure 4.11), astound me with their calibre as
anonymous works, and I am struck by the continuity and similarity between works despite
the absence of guilds or institutes expounding the tradition. The similarities in compositional
layouts celebrate an abundance of life despite the historical conditions of the time: fishes are
as large as tigers, elephants and deer, horses sometimes have three riders, lotus and kadamba
flowers bloom as steam engines billow smoke. There are boat races, buildings and patterns,
all of which appear freely drawn but are painstakingly sewn. Each motif is alive with energy
that is perhaps transferred to the kantha by its maker in stitches as incantations. A central
lotus with many petals and circular shapes (evoked in my work by the circular prayer wheels)
is uniformly present, in works that reward repeated visits. Human bodies are tube-like with
fluid arms and legs but expressive eyes, and space is considered auspicious when filled and
brimming, as life in Bengal often is. The maker is not isolated from the everyday but is
immersed in its sensitive observation. The works appear as colourful drawings and evidence
the skill of the maker and their highly developed sense of colour. Lastly, kantha of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries advance the idea of privileging the creativity and
resilience of the maker by transforming discards into cultural artefacts, instead of relying on
37
conventional art materials. This has encouraged the development of my own sustainable
practice.
2.5 LIVING TRADITION
In her essay, ‘A Stake in Modernity: Brief history of Contemporary Indian Art’, Geeta Kapur
describes the practice of K.G. Subramanyan, who was my own mentor and teacher at
Santiniketan:
An artist like Subramanyan who invents a living tradition through eclectic practice and
pedagogical discourse, and who, with practical good sense, puts together a
contemporary vocabulary drawing on popular and high, urban and rural, and national
and international sources […] Who, moreover, while putting it together so assiduously,
turns the very project about face so that in full irony the iconographies of the so-called
Indian civilization are interrogated (Kapur, 1993, 40).
I understand this to be a form of active learning and examining of selected creative works, to
appreciate the methods, materials, form and content, and applying these within one’s own
practice but in ways that permit a questioning of what may be missing, or what one may wish
to include and thereby allows risk taking in ways that are not pre-determinable. In my
practice, I view tradition as made up of methods/solutions that have been tested over a long
period and by many and that therefore has enough variation to provide a nuanced and well-
developed body of knowledge. This could be extended by the introduction of new methods
and/or relevant content, in a similar way to the evolution of language that grows when it
absorbs new words and meanings to make for an inexhaustible vocabulary.
Subramanyan’s ideas of a living tradition emerged in response to the narrowing down of
tradition to fit reductive nationalist agendas that also used religion as a divisive force and
curtailed risk taking. As explained by Hacker:
Long associated with Kala Bhawan at Santiniketan, where he both studied and taught,
Subramanyan […] engaged with the conceptual framework of living tradition and its
creative possibilities. Not so much concerned with the survival of the past as with the
enrichment of the present (Hacker, 2010, 77).
Tradition, in the context of kantha, was learnt inter-generationally from both a mother’s
family as well as from the women and community that one married into. It relied on using
existing material and mixed the sacred with the functional in a practice that permitted
38
individual variations. There were no guilds, published resources or museum exhibits to
account for a tradition until kanthas began to be collected.
My own practice is associated with kantha in a way that is hybrid and that did not begin with
kantha but has absorbed its strategies and ways of looking. It considers the knowledge gained
as strategies by which to negotiate the personal placed within local, post-colonial and
transnational currents in a search for wholeness that is open to the unholy and the unsaid. As
explained by Subramanyan
If art, too, has to have a real presence in today’s society and add to its quality of life
[…] we shall need a model within which the creative individual will be in live contact
with his environment and through it the larger world- and there will be numerous
creative individuals of this kind at various levels of expression. This alone makes a
living tradition (K. G Subramanyan, 1987, 92-93).
2.6 SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
In my exploration of the practices of Hall, Kimsooja and Singh, I am inspired by how they
transcend from personal to universal humanitarian / environmental / cultural concerns over
many years of practice and contribute unique perspectives. To my knowledge, their works
have not been previously examined together and then tested or reflected upon by a creative
practitioner. Coincidentally, all artists in my review have either lived or travelled in the
Indian subcontinent, and Sri Lanka, though this was not the perspective from where I viewed
their works. Each artist has also used materials that are unorthodox and local: the newspapers
and cardboard boxes with their stamps and text in Singh’s works, the sardine cans, video tape
and currency notes in Hall’s and the textiles forming bottari bundles in Kimsooja’s works.
The content and subjective narratives of all three artists are layered and non-didactic. Their
works are sensitive responses to concerns that belong to our time, but in a manner that exudes
emotional resonance, without preaching, nor directing but by inviting contemplation. They
have not restrained the size and the monumentality inherent in their works, whether as
singular paintings, or encompassing entire rooms and transforming space, often in
unconventional ways using digital technology and/or found objects.
In comparing their different ways of working, I have been introduced to different materials
and to reflect on how I may use these within my own practice, inspired by my exposure to the
principles of a ‘living tradition’. This has prompted me to explore whether I would inflict
mark making that induces a certain level of violence and change to the material, or would I
allow it to speak for itself through photographing the material in narrative settings. How
39
would I refine and extend my interest in sacred spaces that nurture the works and the viewer?
I note how all three artists and kantha practitioners have employed local or available cultural
material and have transformed this material, changed the way it is read and added new
meanings. This is directly linked to my own adoption of a practice-led methodology that
includes a significant awareness of tradition and history, amidst ongoing reflexivity that
makes connections, absorbs information and tests new ideas.
11. Natasha Narain, 2016, Inself, kantha painting, acrylic, mixed media and collage on canvas, 90cm x 90 cm.
40
Chapter 3: Methodology and Processes
3.1 METHODOLOGY
The structure of my research design has privileged a balance between visual art practice and
contextual exploration with a view to build on historical understanding and knowledge of the
intergenerational practice of kantha so as to reflect on its significance and its connection to
my own practice while also examining the work of selected artists (Fiona Hall, Kimsooja and
Arpita Singh) whose practices are highly likely to make a significant and long term impact on
my practice and contextualise the approaches I have taken.
I have chosen a practice-led research methodology in order to explore and advance
knowledge within the paradigm of creative practice. I assume the role of a maker/investigator
to fully understand the potential of kantha as both a material and a method. This has required
an examination of the components integral to my own practice and can be considered as a
form of action research through painting, photography, drawing, sewing, and collaging, and
the co-existence of these processes within each work. It has helped me to understand why I
am consistently drawn to certain materials or forms and has clarified the processes that I have
developed to transform these materials or to develop content. It has explored how all of my
chosen forms become interlinked by my methods of practice. The research has opened up the
potential to apply these methods to new material, whether found or digital. It has thereby
facilitated relationships of form and content to evolve and make or alter meanings using both
traditional and non-traditional means.
This has privileged the creative process, generated new works and encouraged reflection that
searches for and defines the interconnections between works, regardless of time periods. This
analysis has provided an understanding of the contexts that are significant for my practice and
encouraged in-depth historical and qualitative exploration of the significant underlying
intergenerational tradition of the Bengali kantha. The research aimed at growing my
knowledge of kantha and ways in which it could be explored and tested through practice.
This required contextual research related to the context amidst which kanthas were created, a
discerning appreciation of its form and content, and the application of this knowledge in the
studio without direct replication or indeterminate attribution.
41
This cyclical reading and reflection amidst ongoing practice facilitated a better understanding
of the layering of kantha and a recognition of intrinsic ways of looking and doing. It
simultaneously extended the concepts and concerns (content) and their subsequent and
eclectic visual solutions (forms). By exploring the complex subterranean meanings that exist
under assimilated surfaces, the choice of a practice-led methodology has been fruitful in
encouraging complex links to emerge between the historical, spiritual, practical, and feminist
alongside the aesthetic. These links can be explored further through ongoing research.
3.2 KANTHA AS A METHOD
As I progressed through this research, I began to recognise how kantha can act as a working
method for contemporary art. This section describes this journey through method.
3.2.1 Kanthas
In an effort to both honour the ethos of kantha and to test it as a contemporary medium by
infusing ideas of travel, migration, concentration and diffusion, place and memory, I have
spent the last two years travelling and showing tangible art work, along with delivering
papers and lecture presentations. Welcoming viewers to touch and examine paintings, view
the books and engage with the dolls, I sought to build imperceptible human connections and
concurrently deepen the tactile memory held within each work. This altered the common
perception of kantha as a museum display object and restored kantha’s place within
community. It also affirmed the ability of kantha to create dialogical places and to build a
community as I witnessed how touching the material immediately opened respectful
dialogue and broke through personal, cultural and linguistic barriers. The works acquired
new meanings and stories became a bridge linking geopolitical boundaries. For example, in
December 2015, I travelled to New Delhi and to Shimla (see image below) to discuss the
work, in addition to exhibitions and presentations in Ballarat, Brisbane, Melbourne,
Newcastle and Logan during the duration of the research.
42
12. Natasha Narain: 2015, Performative presentation of kantha, H.P. University, Simla. India. Image courtesy:
Kesang Youdon.
On one hand, these interventions through kantha-like paintings are linked to emerging
narratives of cultural complexity beyond a mono-cultural identity. On the other hand, this
way of direct engagement provided me with rich material that allowed for the local and the
current, amidst a sharing of common concerns and of life narratives. These are relevant
considering my own distance in time and place, from narratives in existing kanthas. I have
thereby considered the conversations as capable of becoming a work in themselves, as
demonstrated in the work W.O.R.D.S (2014-2015).
W.O.R.D.S became a quilt of conversations that would, in traditional quilting, remain only in
memory, superseded by visual motifs. I saw myself as a witness, a role that Zaman describes
when discussing the Kantha practitioner, who,
embroidering her kantha was both a witness and preserver of the moment of impact of
East and West. The advent of the British is recorded […] at the same time, the old
traditions formed an intrinsic part of the ethos […] it was a world close to nature [but]
it was also a world that absorbed and assimilated diverse impressions (Zaman 2010,
130).
This agency as a collector of impressions is crucial to my own understanding of Kantha as a
working method, however I remain acutely aware of the historical position of these women.
Ultimately, my methodological application of kantha is best summarised by Ghosh’s
description of the traditions dynamic:
Kanthas are highly dynamic, sharing the improvisational quality of conversations
themselves, and embodying individual agency and relational value. They become
repositories of memories of particular makers, givers, recipients, and owners: of the
used, repaired, and preserved: and of the intricate networks of relationships initiated,
43
activated, transmuted or even challenged in particular contexts of giving and using
(Ghosh, 2010, 32).
13. Natasha Narain, 2014. Artist in residence at Logan Village Library, as part of community engagement,
W.O.R.D.S. “Homesickness Project”, Mentors: Kevin Leong & Elizabeth Woods. Image credit: Kevin Leong.
http://www.homesickness.org.au/cms/project/logan-art-gallery
http://www.homesickness.org.au/cms/project/words
3.2.2 Collage
Kathleen Vaughan’s research on collage as an interdisciplinary method describes the juxta-
positioning (placing or gluing) of an image or object onto an existing work as a strategy to
create new meanings. She refers to Picasso’s use of this method to suggest the changes/
disruptions within his own time. Vaughan also explains how collage lends itself to digital
processes and film as a kind of braiding or mixing together and is no longer restricted to
works on paper or on canvas (Vaughan, 2005, 3-4). Brockelman explains collage as a process
that permits:
The gathering of materials from different worlds [to] call attention to the irreducible
heterogeneity of the ‘postmodern condition’ [.] Collage depends upon a new kind of
relationship between these two shards of the traditional concept of worldhood – and as
a result, it promises a new sense of truth and experience (Brockelman, 2001, 10-11).
44
Harding proposes collage as a model for a “borderlands epistemology” that values non-
Eurocentric, multicultural, feminist and alternate ways of “organizing the production of
knowledge and thus, conceptual themes that cultures have developed” and that consequently
offers a postcolonial strategy for broadening the scope of Western knowledge (Harding,1996,
19, 22). Harding explains:
The goal of such an epistemology is not to try to integrate them all into one maximally
ideal knowledge system, for such a process would necessarily lose the advantage of the
conflicting […]conceptual schemes that cultures have developed.[Just as] Multicultural
feminisms focus on the distinct political histories and practices shaping women’s
conditions, interests, and desires in different local, national, and transnational cultures
and the necessity for thinking about these distinctive histories in designing social
change.[As] knowledge for women and their activities does not completely coincide
with knowledge for men and their activities (Harding, 1996, 23-24).
14. Natasha Narain, 2013-2016, detail of collage from three kantha paintings.
In my own practice, I use collage to impart narrative to abstract colour or pattern and to test
new relationships by drawing on its ability to open up discussion on multiple and opposing
truths as coexisting contemporaneously. This challenges normativity and honours multiple
truths, worldviews and realities. It does so by acknowledging the repressed stories of the
marginalised and the shifting fluidity of political borders, and by creating visual equivalents
of micronarratives. Collage offers a visual means to refer to my experience of displacement
and migration as an acquiescent but abrupt change in place, language, and physical reality.
That disorients time, schedules, and swiftly changes what is culturally valued and expected.
This shift renders previous truths meaningless but also induces the feeling that it is somehow
possible to make one’s life meaningful again. So, in my practice, I become both the outside
agent and the marginalised other in a process of assimilation and reparation. To research this
effect, I increasingly make my own images such as photographs from my life and
45
environment, places that I travel to, people that I meet or see, photographs of existing works,
and these images are collaged onto ongoing works.
Through action research, I observe that collaged images can appear on the surface, as
disconnected and transient, be painted over and subsumed into the patterned background
(dominant culture), or a third and newly emerging option where the entity is neither
incongruous nor extinguished, but is present as a part of the overall structure. This is a visual
reflection of my own identity as a bridge between places and cultures and the broader
experience of diaspora. My use of collage employs a strategy of mapping inherent to kantha.
A traditional kantha maker was a witness to social and cultural changes and created new
motifs with which to reflect their time. They observed and drew in new and (for that time)
incongruous elements, such as a train, an Englishman on his horse, or women in crinoline
dresses. These became motifs amidst otherwise timeless and mythological settings, as visual
records of the outside (world) having entered Bengal.
15. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kalpa Vriksha, Kantha painting, oil, mixed media and collage on un-stretched
canvas, 180 x 100cm, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
In the case of women in my own family, I am the third generation that has lived away from
Bengal, and as memories faded over time, we lost access to the strategies of self-reflexive
presentation offered by kantha. Through the opportunity made possible by this research, what
46
appeared as compulsive workings of the unconscious have been mostly decoded and made
available as a visual language.
3.2.3 Bricolage
The related concept of bricolage refers to the construction or creation of a work from a
diverse range of materials that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process.
As this allows for unusual, discarded, found, given or inherited things and materials to be
reused as art material, it encourages a sustainable and eclectic practice, and answers to a
hybrid and postmodern outlook. When the materials come together, they are not held back by
their original meanings but can be ascribed new meanings and provide new and previously
untried visual solutions. This facilitates an intertextuality and a layering that is conducive to
myth making and an opportunity to integrate a variety of knowledge sets to produce
innovative works that are complex (Klages, 2012, 12). This is an active method of collecting,
reassembling or transforming found materials in practice with meanings arrived at after
completion.
Bricolage is employed by Fiona Hall, for example, through her collection of currency, cans,
video tape, clocks, or organic items collected from nature as a range of disconnected ‘stuff’
that form the material base of her practice. Using the materials in a non-traditional way to
become something else is only possible through an appreciation of the physicality of the
material and the ability to respond and steadfastly work through its inherent possibilities. In
doing so, Hall allows the material to take on new meanings and associations, and to become a
part of a higher purpose that transforms a body of works into visual articulations of her
concerns. Concurrently, the material also adds information on place and time. For instance,
video tape changed from being treasured to being superseded by compact discs in the late
1990s and Hall’s work Slash and Burn from 1997 pulls tape out of its case and then knits
exquisite and delicate faces with the tape. This layers in the weaving, dexterity, patience and
time inherent to women’s craft practice, but the final presentation as an installation in a
gallery space makes a moving statement on larger issues of riots and humanitarian loss.
Arpita Singh employs text printed on cardboard boxes, packaging and detritus as well as
newspapers and maps, not directly working on these materials, but replicating their surfaces
in her paintings in appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of non-traditional material and their
47
reconfiguration and arrangement, to make new meanings, as layered collage-bricolage and
painting.
In my practice, I collect objects that hold memories for me, such as discarded hard bound
books, letters, wooden chairs with marks and dents, wooden drawers, plain (not patterned)
cotton and silk dresses and fabric, wooden cable wheels, dolls, bottle caps and natural
materials such as peeled barks and pebbles. The materials are repurposed: drawers become
mini installations and boxes for dolls, the cable wheels become prayer wheels, the chairs
become plinths for artist’s books, or are used in dioramas with the dolls. The dolls take on
new identities and the dresses become anthropomorphic. These transformations occur
through new juxtapositions and associations, and a process of washing and painting that
allows new meanings to eventuate.
Painting and drawing on the material brings a contemplative oneness where the potential and
limits of the material are opened. For instance, nails, nets, small icons, and postage stamps
are layered onto a painted cable wheel or an artist’s book. A doll’s dress is removed and
replaced by painted bubble wrap and prayer beads. The works take on a hybrid and
postmodern appearance where material collected in Brisbane and in Delhi come together. For
example, Indian brocade is opened up to reveal its layers and draped on the large blue doll
from a local source. Bricolage allows my practice to create bodies of works that are capable
of their own narrative myths.
My recent installation (Mapping Nurture, 2016) was effectively a large-scale bricolage of
disparate elements within my practice to be placed in the same room, in compartments of the
similar. However, as I used the gallery space as a workspace, I carried and moved works
where the dolls sometimes sat on the wheels, read a book, or were placed against a painting,
which altered and extended meanings. This fluidity is a potential that I have not explored to
its capacity and will form a part of my ongoing research in the future.
48
3.3 RELATED RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
To increase my awareness of the research being conducted by my peers, to increase research
impact and to invite critical feedback, I participated in conferences and exhibitions that
presented and tested my own research. Doing so has helped me to test the relevance but has
also given me some practice in structuring an argument and working through the challenge of
looking at the problem from different vantage points to suit the theme of each conference, or
exhibition, as listed below:
Conferences:
• Narain, Natasha. 2016. “Reactivating kantha from loss to perpetuation,” paper
presented at Work in Progress Conference: On the Edge, 27-28 September,
University of Queensland School of Communication and Arts, Brisbane, QLD.
• Narain, Natasha. 2016. “A goddess of resilience from a cross cultural creative
practice,” paper presented at The Australian Women's and Gender Studies Biennial
International Conference, Destorying the Joint: debating feminism, politics and the
media in Australia, 29 June-1 July, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane,
QLD.
• Narain, Natasha. 2016. “Reactivating Kantha,” paper presented at Symposium:
Students in Creative Arts Research: exploring frameworks and models for the creative
thesis, 7-9 April, DDCA and University of Newcastle, NSW.
• Narain, Natasha. 2015. “Travelling across borders with my kantha,” paper presented
at Ballarat International Photo Biennale Symposium: Borderless Futures, Reimaging
the Citizen, 29 August, Photography Studies College, Ballarat, Victoria.
Seminars and guest lectures:
• Visual Arts Post Graduate Research Seminars, Creative Industries Faculty, QUT,
Brisbane (24 May 2016). Exploring reactivation of ‘Bengali Kantha’ into a cross-
cultural contemporary practice.
• Nine Schools of Art, Shahpur Jat, New Delhi, India. (26 December 2015). Travelling
across borders with my Kanthas.
49
• Australia India Institute, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India. (22 December
2015). Performative presentation of Kantha paintings.
Book Chapter:
Narain Natasha. 2016. “Reflections on identity, tradition and reconfiguration”, in
Narratives of estrangement and belonging: Indo Australian Perspectives edited by Dr
Neelima Kanwar, 260-276, Authors Press: New Delhi, ISBN 9789352073931.
Exhibitions/ Professional practice:
Solo shows
2016 Mapping Nurture: The Reparation Project, Frank Moran Gallery, QUT, Brisbane.
2015 Ma: Artist’s book presentation, QUT Library, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane.
Workshop
2015 Kitabart: Conducted an Artist’s Book Workshop, F.I.C.A (Federation of Indian
Contemporary Art) as the educational arm of Vadehra Art Gallery, Defence Colony, New
Delhi.
Group shows
2016 Excerpts: Curated by Mark Webb, The Block, QUT, Brisbane.
2016 Religious Art Prize: Chapel on Station Gallery, Box Hill, Melbourne.
2016 Chroma: Beth Hulme Gallery, Melbourne.
2016 Four Walls, Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne.
2015 We Wear Future: Virgin Australia Fashion Festival, Brunswick Street Gallery,
Melbourne.
2015 The Homesickness Project: Logan Art Gallery, Logan.
2014 W.O.R.D.S. In Situ art-sign installation, Logan Village precinct.
2014 Artist at Logan Village Library. Community engagement project.
50
3.4 REFLECTION
16. Natasha Narain: 2016. Excerpts. Curated by Mark Webb, The Block, QUT.
Image Courtesy: QUT Creative Industries Faculty.
A reconnection with and an understanding of kantha has made sense of my instinctive
disposition to present the world in playful drawings and patterns interconnected by marks,
and to view discards as art material. A consideration of kantha as a visual language rather
than as a tradition to be exactingly replicated, has opened my practice to look for symbols,
stories, images, patterns and subjects with which to make meaning from my own time and
place. The study of past works of kantha makes apparent a similarity in concern and care for
family, humanity and nature alongside a love of narrative storytelling and how women
witness the world around them and find ways to depict wholeness through stories, patterns
and impressions. I have concluded also that, as with the pattern and decoration movement in
western feminist art, kantha offers the potential as a long-standing women’s practice to
include stories and aspects of lived experience that are more inclusive of contemporary issues
and feminist perspectives. Kantha has offered me strategies to represent the sacred alongside
the everyday and the temporal. It has facilitated a reflexive and portable method of making
place, and of continuous practice through change: a way to include events witnessed or
experienced, in a manner that is playfully whimsical and layered, as evidenced by works that
I have created through the research period.
51
My practice-led reconnection with the methods of kantha has acknowledged the link between
found or existing material and the viability of my practice, where I work with intuitive/
impulsive collection of images, found objects and ephemeral material to explore how they
can be transformed or presented as art. This approach echoes the sustainable methods used by
a kantha practitioner, and allows the practice to thrive regardless of funds available. It is as if
the materials feed my practice in an unhurried and organic way, for an eventual transition and
transformation, like the collecting of borders from sarees and recycling of embroidered
patches onto new kantha works. A kantha practitioner is a keen witness and observer of her
surroundings and this research has opened methods by which to negotiate/weave
contradictory positions, changed circumstances, and extremities of experience, where
everything is interconnected by swirling lines and stitch-like marks. Encouraging touch has
opened up conversations and created memories, and the rolling and unrolling of kantha
paintings has also taken on aspects of ritual, in a process not unlike the turning of pages of a
vast book made up of many layers.
My study has made me aware of efforts that have already been made to revive kantha after
Bangladesh became an independent nation in 1971, as well as its reappearance in
Santiniketan (Birbhum District) in West Bengal. It has made clear how kantha has always
been an intrinsic part of my practice and opened possibilities for further integrating kantha
with digital technology. I have tried to bring kantha to the attention of other artists, peers and
academics in seminars and talks and created a place and awareness of its potential,
internationally. I have not solely pursued its replication as a form of sentimental diasporic
reconnection, but immersed it within other mediums such as photography, artists’ books, doll
goddesses and paintings, to draw from its essence and to reactivate it as a self-reflexive
practice.
52
17.Natasha Narain, 2015, Body, kantha painting, oil, collage and mixed media on un-stretched canvas,175 x
100cm. Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
53
Chapter 4: Creative Work
The creative outcomes of my project aimed at a polyphonous braiding of what at the outset
appeared as dissimilar and divergent methods of visual art practice: an interdisciplinary and
contemporary practice with its mainstay in painting, an interest in photography, soft sculpture
and artists’ books, yet choosing to explore a traditional stitch based craft practice, the
methods and meaning of which were mostly unknown or unavailable to me. This required a
consideration of all mediums, instead of a simple transplanting of motifs or return to
embroidery only. The work was aiming to achieve polyphony within singular works
(microcosms), followed by their combined presentation as an installation (macrocosm)
without clearly knowing what the outcomes would be. A persistent voice within me insisted
that my answers lay in risking a link in these part unknowns.
4.1 CANVAS PAINTING
18A. Natasha Narain, 2016. Kantharsis, detail, kantha painting. Acrylic and mixed media, collage on unframed
canvas. H 90cm L 90 cm.
54
In continuing to paint while examining visual work (form) and published writing (content)
on kantha, I consciously noted my thoughts and found that I constantly negotiated binaries
such as the said/unsaid, inside/outside, political history/personal history, philosophy/popular
religion, memories/losses, and nurturing/emptiness. This practice required meditative
isolation, but its outcome was reparative and elevating.
18B. Natasha Narain, 2016, Kantharsis, detail. (The building up of automatic lines, the inclusion of
narratives, the colours aid in the creating of cathartic and psychological landscapes).
While painting, I tried to empty my mind by allowing concerns to flow and to intermingle
without consciously privileging one over the other, in a contemplative focusing on as well as
a letting go. By doing so, carefully drawn lines, circles, flowers and patterns were overtaken
by energetic and aggressive lines, by scratches and attempts at erasure and camouflage,
digging deeper into the canvas as if to open up the surface and break through the pattern.
Sometimes the new layer would float on top of the old, providing visual intricacy in a variety
of lines of different thicknesses, well-formed or scratched in. The collaging in of images
imparted multiple meanings interlinked as multiple stories and reminded me of a Kalpa
Vriksha or living tree as a kantha: vast, old and with many parts that could offer detailed
study, but where all components are also linked within one structure. This structure was
simultaneously affected by its surroundings and yielded to other narratives and patterns,
dissolving and reappearing as if playing hide and seek, in ways that challenged my control
and conformity to a singular meaning.
55
Instead of stitching as a kantha practitioner would, when I used my own photographic
images, I immersed the photo in a tray filled with warm tap water then peeled the white paper
behind the photo, crushed and crumpled the thinned almost transparent photo so it developed
creases and then pasted or stitched it onto the canvas, in a manner similar to applique and
textile practices. The collaged in images were further painted over to assimilate them within
the canvas (as if to weave them in). The stories were partly autobiographical, or seen and felt
(similar to a kantha) but sometimes there was no clear story and I allowed myself to be
immersed within the colours, textures and mark making as similar to what Pika Ghosh noted
in her interactions with kantha practitioners Amima and Banasree Nag Chaudhari in Sagar,
West Bengal:
They described the addictive pleasure (nesha) when one really gets into embroidering,
often staying up too late at night, or working in the dim glow of candlelight. They
reminisced how hard it was to put the emerging motif aside as it was flowering (phuthe
otha), or as the fingers got into the rhythm of executing the running stitch with
precision […] the acute physical sensation is very personal, an intimate reconnecting
with oneself. The nostalgia for that feeling of exhilaration arising from the engagement
of mind and body was easily visible […] they recalled being chided for neglecting […]
daily domestic duties as they relished their quiet time in the silence of the night (Ghosh,
2009, 43).
19A. Natasha Narain, 2011-2014, My Family Tree, (early stage resembling a kantha), employing applique,
collage, stitch, mixed media on un-stretched canvas. 180 x 100cm. Image Credit: Carl Warner.
56
19B. Natasha Narain, 2011-2014, My Family Tree, completed kantha painting,
Acrylic, collage, stitch and mixed media on un-stretched canvas, clipped onto painted wooden board. 180 x
100cm. Image Credit: Carl Warner.
Mindful of the compositional layout of a kantha, I would draw a central flowering mandala
that resembled a prayer wheel, but in time this was painted over, extended to the periphery or
displaced somewhere in between, dissolving into a liminal space, reflecting my own
displacement from a centre. Where travel has made me view the world from multiple
perspectives, and left me with a sense that perhaps I shall always inhabit an in between space:
a diasporic place, traversing between the known and many unknowns. My paintings negotiate
the surface of my temporal reality and a subterranean within – while reawakening personal
and cultural memory to engender cathartic healing. Emerging from a void within, loss and its
darkness, along with sometimes biased and unreliable memory, became agents for a
reconnection with self and with family history. Lines weaving and un-weaving created
boundaries and opened borders while revealing time as fluid and cyclic. Resembling mind
maps, the paintings are holders of memories, nostalgia, the many intersections between lines
flowing automatically from microcosms within me that subconsciously travel to macrocosms
without, as if to reconnect and to heal from many displacements. These flows mark non-
linear time through lines as stitches on never-ending quilts, overlapping remembered events,
stories, and emotions. Simultaneously, I questioned whether my circumstances allowed me a
perspective of distance that permitted respectful reconfiguration of kantha through painting,
57
whether I could draw from extremities of experience and trauma without resorting to the
abject, and whether I could play a polyphonous tune with kantha in a manner that also
refreshed and extended both the method and my creative practice.
4.2 THE DOLLS
Over time, I have moved away from worshipping or following goddesses within my own
Hindu heritage, but through this research, I questioned my reasons for doing so. I
hypothesised that a reconnection was possible through my art practice without quite knowing
how this was to eventuate or why this was a crucial link in restoring a feeling of being whole.
Having grown up in a Brahmin household in India, the associated rituals and chanting from
prayer books (often attributed to goddesses) are part of my sonic, visual and intergenerational
memory, but I found myself questioning the relevance of attributes that conveyed extremes of
behaviour between warrior aggression and subservience as they did not remedy the
extremities imposed on many women or relate meaningfully with their (or my own) lived
experiences. I questioned the conformity to ideals of beauty, purity and a virtuous maternal
often achieved by silencing or erasing shame, loss or darkness. This led me to an appreciation
of the structure on which Goddess mythology is based, as explained by Paul Reid-Bowen:
the three aspects of the Goddess, Maiden-Mother-Crone [are] theologically understood
not only to be pre-and post-patriarchal models of female identity, but also a dynamic
whole: three aspects of a unity […] analogous to patterns and regularities occurring
elsewhere within nature. Thus, images of the Triple Goddess, are closely associated
with the cycles of the moon (Maiden as the waxing moon, Mother as the full, Crone as
the waning) and the movement of the seasons (Maiden as spring, Mother as summer,
Crone as autumn) (Reid-Bowen, 2016, 68-69).
58
20. Natasha Narain:2010-2016, Doll Goddesses, various, singular, in test installations & together.
59
This inspired a growing interest in tripartite goddesses that embody multiple truths, and are
usually older and known to nurture their believers through loss and darkness. In practice, I
saw my dolls evolving into inhabitants of multiple truths, residing between reality and myth.
They appeared both contained and liberated, local and transcultural, young and
simultaneously, old.
I was determined to make each one a little different even though they had once been mostly
similar and factory produced. I did this by being sensitive to subtle differences between them:
of size, body shape, colour of hair, skin and eyes and by observing their gesture, so as to
consider how I could draw attention to their inherent identity. I allowed myself to be intuitive
and transgressive by painting over skin, chopping hair, undressing, dressing with discards,
submerging in dye, layering with text, and varnishing. In doing so, I witnessed the dolls’
transformation and found this reparative, having permitted intuitive and sensitive play that
freed me from my own filters, whether inherited or experiential. This led to the creation of a
large body of new doll goddesses as artworks, linked to kantha in that its makers also
explored and expressed the female sacred. My own goddesses have not one but a list of
names. Chanting these names’ multiple attributes and ethnicities come together as sounds
reminiscent of the Devi Mahatamya, and I hope in the future to extend on this by creating
further mythology of my own, with stories from my own time and represented by my doll
goddesses.
Perhaps my process seeks what Julia Kristeva describes as an inclusion of the dirty, polluting
and inadequate:
The negative and borderline values of contaminating objects are reversible, and reverse
themselves into omnipotent and positive values. […] that is why the author of the
Atharva –Veda exalts the remnant as at once contaminating and regenerative […] on
the remnant is founded the world (Kristeva,1997, 92-93).
By transforming and reviving the dolls, I exercised a kantha maker’s skill in nurture and
transformation. Dressing and undressing them explores my part diasporic, part immersed,
hybrid identity. The undressing removes the strictures of a given identity after a long and
arduous journey, and the washing, painting, and varnishing allows the doll to speak and to
change its identity/ethnicity in a playful way. They reappear in my paintings as photographs
and install themselves in dioramas, imparting context to their persona.
60
21A. Natasha Narain, 2016. Mapping Nurture, Central Shrine, Frank Moran Gallery. Image Credit: Carl Warner
21B. Natasha Narain. 2016. Mapping Nurture, The Dolls rested at Night on the cloth I worked on during the
day.
In Mapping Nurture: The Reparation Project, the installation permitted my doll goddesses to
be arranged in the centre and assert their presence. They could be together, in conversation
with each other, as a community in formation, revelling in their rejuvenated and transformed
empowerment. Sitting, standing, lying down (metaphorically walking, dancing, studying,
playing, eating, teaching), they appeared to be breathing and culturally indeterminate,
feminist and spiritual with hair shorn or wild, not nude or voluptuous or inviting the male
gaze, their gestures were that of nurture and healing, maternal and always exceptionally kind.
61
21C Natasha Narain, 2016, Dolls, detail, various, Mapping Nurture, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner
The interrelationships between the dolls and the paintings is still unfolding. I ask myself
whether the paintings are the landscapes that the dolls shall hereon roam on and how they
may become protagonists. They have been collaged in as in the images below, but in a
digital realm, will they become bigger and activated and will they live in the paintings? An
outcome of my research has also been that I am no longer searching for images as I used to,
since the dolls and paintings will impart narrative to ongoing and future works.
22. Natasha Narain, a doll as a photograph, collaged into My Family Tree: kantha painting. Image Credit: Karen
Milder.
62
4.3 PRAYER WHEELS
23. Natasha Narain, 2016, Prayer wheels, painted kantha on canvas, doll parts, installed for Mapping Nurture,
Frank Moran Gallery, Image Credit: Carl Warner.
Predating my research into kantha but continued through it, the wheels help me to realise the
continuity and link between disparate elements of my practice. While searching for a portable
alternative to stretched or framed canvas, I came across cable wheels in Reverse Garbage in
Brisbane, in an affordable and abundant supply. Also functioning as mandalas, they became a
part of my practice for over ten years. Once sealed and primed they permit writing, drawing,
painting, nailing and collage, while the wheel is turned by hand. Each wheel offers an
opportunity to try a different technique and over time, they have served as test works for
methods that are carried over to the artist’s books and paintings. The mandalas or prayer
wheels are echoed in the circles, dots and patterns in my canvas paintings, but in the wheels,
they challenge preconceived compositions or linear story telling. They encourage automatic
drawing and patterning and allow time to become cyclic as the past, the present and the future
can coexist and be returned to with each turn of the wheel, and in doing so they welcome
readings from changeable vantage points. The prayer wheels answered my need to make
portable works that can be easily stacked for storage but then spread to make a place. Playful
as a vast jigsaw the pieces are interrelated but do not fit to make any one story. In layering
my paintings under them, placing dolls and objects on them, the wheels allow narratives that
come about by accident but that refresh the readings. Researching into my almost compulsive
need to make these mandala-like works, I came to see them linked to alpana practices of my
63
maternal ancestors. Dr Stella Kramrisch explains alpanas as magic diagrams that were a part
of the ritual art of women:
The art of painting on the floor […] is the prerogative of women. Its traditions are
handed down from mother to daughter […] it scares away evil spirits. […] They are
intuited and functional diagrams transmitted by women. [...] In the Vrata Alpana of
eastern India, the hopes and wishes of the artist are precipitated into the designs on the
floor (Kramrisch, 1939, 105-111).
To transfer these practices to a contemporary time and setting, the placement of the wooden
wheels in the centre of the gallery and on a wooden floor honoured memories within the
space seen as marks on the floor and as consecration of the space itself. The placement in the
centre evoked a kantha with its central lotus that radiates energy out to the four corners but,
reflective of my own displacement the lotus or central mandala was made of many wheels, or
petals that were connected and displaced into what appeared as a moving and asymmetric
form. This was representative of my own identity linked to my past, open to my present and
searching for hybrid meanings. I felt my purpose also lay in linking the Frank Moran
Gallery’s past as an Army Mess hall (a connection with my late father, who served in the
Army) to the room’s church like architecture and to its new purpose as a place for reflection
and art. Soon after, the wheels resonated vibrantly from the dark floors of the Block, at QUT,
revelling in the large space and the dramatic lighting, and a secular sacred place was thus
created.
24A. Natasha Narain, 2006- 2016, Prayer Wheels, mixed media on wood, canvas and doll parts, as an
Installation for Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image credit: Carl Warner. 24B in Excerpts, curated by
Mark Webb, The Block, QUT, Brisbane. Image Credit: Creative Industries Faculty.
64
4.4 ARTIST’S BOOKS
25. Natasha Narain, 2014, Unhallowed, artist’s book, mixed media on found book, Installation on found chair,
Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image Credit: Carl Warner.
Artist books offer an extension of continuous practice amidst displacement or travel. For me
they began with a chance meeting with E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, found in a
hardbound version in a second-hand shop in Paddington. A book that I recalled reading in my
teenage years in India, its words, characters, places and sentiments appealed to the diasporic
in me. However, as I began reading, the distance that I had travelled became evident in my
disagreement with the attitudes and cultural conditioning, and a colonial viewpoint of the
‘exotic other’ that the book revealed in prose otherwise compellingly rich in imagery.
My process of analysis began within reading: as an underline, a circling, and a notation. From
there the book became a viable surface on which to draw, paint, stain, and one that accepted
tearing, erasure, re-marking, scratching, and inking over, to destroy existing meanings in
what most would consider a defilement, but was done with care, in a calm and nurturing
manner, instinctively carried out in the quiet of a studio. Other books followed, exploring
ideas such as of the passage of time, memories, maternal care, and some even contained my
own writing. The works express a love for both the content and materiality of books as
objects that hold meaning and as rich surfaces to work with. Over time, collaging in of
photographs of my kantha paintings extended the narrative possibilities and connected both
approaches.
65
26. Natasha Narain, 2013-2014, Womb, Artist’s Book, detail, mixed media, collage, stitch, on found book. (H
22cm, L 16cm D 8cm). Image Credit: Carl Warner.
27. Natasha Narain, 2012-2015, Mother and Passage to India, Artist’s Books, mixed media, collage and stitch on
found books. (Mother: H20cm L12cm D 5 cm. Passage to India: H 22cm, L 16cm, D 10cm). Image Credit: Carl
Warner.
66
4.5 INSTALLATION AND SOUND
Presentation
28. Natasha Narain, 2016, Installation, Kantha paintings, dolls, prayer wheels, Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran
Gallery, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner.
The exhibition, Mapping Nurture: The Reparation Project, Frank Moran Gallery at QUT,
allowed a coming together of different but interconnected elements within my practice.
Conceptually drawing on the notion of an activated kantha quilt, the arrangement of the
works broadly related to the compositional layout of a conventional kantha without being
strictly adherent to its symmetry. The presentation also created a sacred space that
approximated a temple, an altar, a shrine, an alpana, in a mingling of Brahmanical with Vrata,
Hindu and Catholic, while also being an art installation. The large kantha paintings were not
framed or attached to the walls of the gallery. Instead, as a way to honour their portability,
they were clipped onto MDF sheets that rested on sawhorses from the workshop next door.
The sheets were painted burnt umber to suggest a connection to the earth, and to the
terracotta temples of Bengal that have narrative reliefs on their external walls. The dolls
could be free as they were not held down by metal supports or silenced as curiosities inside
glass cabinets. Artist books rested on chairs and the wheels approximated the central lotus of
a kantha and gave the appearance of movement, as their overall shape was asymmetrical. I
had tried various ways of displaying the works beforehand, but felt this arrangement best
suited the context of kantha. It created a sacred space and facilitated a circumambulation
67
around the wheels as one viewed the kantha paintings. This manner of displaying large
works and the freedom allowed the dolls, books and wheels encouraged me to take risks that
respected the gallery space but honoured the works to become themselves instead of
complying with more conventional methods of display. Additionally, I could set up a table
and continue working, in what became a performative workspace.
29. Natasha Narain.2016. Images from Mapping Nurture: Frank Moran Gallery. Image Credit: Carl Warner.
68
Artist books were arranged on found and repainted chairs that had been left out on the street
after the 2011 floods in Brisbane. Visitors could sit on the chairs to read or view a book and
they were simultaneously a plinth that could be reused at home or in my studio. The chairs
reminded me /dwelled on my episodic memory of the floods, an event that was both personal
and local. By salvaging, cleaning, repairing, painting and re purposing, they became bodies
that offered a contemplation of loss and renewal. As I worked on them I deliberated on their
journey from being valued to being discarded and wondered who may have once sat on these
chairs, or read these books. I did not cover up dents, marks, stains and scratches. In doing so,
I hoped the viewer could access emotional content retained by the surfaces of the books and
the chairs.
A dress that was drawn on, dyed, varnished, collaged into and ready to become a large doll
body, kept me company, resting against a cotton saree that belonged to my mother, both
inviting viewers to feel the cotton of a kantha and allowing me to keep family close to my
workspace within the gallery.
30. Natasha Narain, Nadine’s dress. 2016, Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery, Image Courtesy: Carl Warner
69
31A. Natasha Narain, 2015-2016, Test Installations at H & Z Block, QUT, Brisbane.
31B. Natasha Narain: 2015-2016. Images from my Studio at QUT, Brisbane.
The added introduction of sound that did not belong to a recognisable language but to human
voice and musical instruments, helped fill in the interstices between works as I worked on the
tablecloth in the workspace, or read a book. The music, by Icelandic post-rock band, Sigur
Rós, linked my studio to the gallery space, with sounds that flowed through both. I found their
unique Hopelandish language (made up of sounds not words where the listener can make up
their own lyrics) from the album Valtari (2012) particularly apt. This idea was tested in the
installation, as viewers were not provided with a textual explanation, didactics or titles but had
to spend time with the works to see embedded narratives, and the meanings were left open.
Adding to the viewer’s engagement was my own presence, which enabled an opportunity for
70
conversation and discussion of my work. This allowed me an opportunity to listen to views of
visiting academics and artists, and has provided me with valuable feedback. Visitors observed
the structure in paintings as fluid; the apparent movement of the wheels; inherent similarities to
Australian indigenous art; and the collaged, hidden narratives that changed each time they
revisited the work. They had visceral responses to the colours and the presence of near living
dolls, but some also found it a calming place despite the many works being present. They
commented on the effect of the diffused incense placed in a ceramic jug, their desire to play
with the dolls and to enjoy a small chocolate treat on each visit, and they provided suggestions
for music and other artist’s works, all of which was greatly helpful, in that it allowed
meaningful conversations and a validation of my practice.
Additionally, as I worked late into the evening, I listened to Devi Mahatamya recordings and
felt connected to the Durga Puja festival that was concurrently occurring in Kolkata, as these
are sounds that a kantha practitioner would have also listened to. The gallery space, with its
wooden floorboards resembled lines of running stitches, becoming a kantha installation. The
dolls purporting as part divinity, some androgynous, every day and allegorical, were
confidently assertive as a group, celebrating their growing family. Obviously, these were not
presented as a quietened collection placed within glass cases as in a museum, nor made to
stand still on metal supports. Visitors were welcome to pick up, to touch, and to rearrange the
dolls, but few did, except for children who sat on the floor with me and discussed possible
stories.
The installation also engaged with an exploration of an active and dynamic centre, which was
layered and changeable. Neither completely moving towards the corners and the periphery,
nor staying still in the centre. The mandalas, prayer wheels or alpanas were individual works
that became connected with the other, echoing the dolls that presented more strongly as a
collective and employed similar notions of changeability and movement. This coming
together of the works in their public presentation has allowed me to explore deeper into the
intersection between myself, my heritage and my current life and times. It has allowed an
interrogation of diverse narratives that have helped me to transform feelings of isolation into
a sense of belonging.
71
32. Natasha Narain, 2016, Central Shrine, Mapping Nurture, Frank Moran Gallery.
72
Chapter 5: Conclusion
33. Natasha Narain, 2014-2016, Kashmir, detail from final stage, kantha painting, oil, mixed media, stitch and
collage on unframed canvas. 180 x 100 cm.
On a personal level, this research has allowed me a means to reconnect and validate my roots
and to recuperate from displacement and personal losses enmeshed within collective trauma.
More broadly, this approach offers a means to revisit personal and collective history, to repair
from losses within intergenerational memory and in the process, to create emerging visual
strategies that are centred within ideas of nurture and community. Addressing the experience
of diaspora, my suitcase has allowed me to carry my canvases as folded kanthas, along with
dolls and artist’s books and permitted a continuation of practice amidst change. This allowed
me to gain a sense of how other women would have felt in their forced displacement. I
engaged with ideas of cultural transference, whereby the meaning of artworks changed and
accrued new interpretations. Borrowing the portability of a kantha, in each unfolding of my
kantha paintings I endeavoured to allegorically connect geo-political boundaries by bringing
my personal and metamorphic imagery to the site: one world within another, linking the
73
inside to the outside. I have already begun to imagine how this process could be extended in
the future.
34. Natasha Narain, 2015, Kantha paintings unrolled and made accessible, Nine Schools of Art, New Delhi.
Image Credit: Samudra Kajal Saikia.
http://nineschoolsofart.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/weaving-memories-artist-natasha-narain.html
To the future: sound and the digital
What I found missing in the creative outcomes of this research was a proper exploration of
sound as way to explore the sacred. In the future, I would like to explore transformative
sounds that are not from a language of words but of feeling, body and historical memory,
with the intention of intensifying emotional transference of feeling.
To explore digitisation, I have started to photograph existing works, focussing on fragments
that hold subjective narrative or pattern, and am making small video recordings from my own
environment with a view to build new digital work from these studies. I am curious to see
how these would open new associations and meanings, removed from their existing locations,
but connected by mark making (stitched together). I look forward to playing with scale: large
immersive installations that allow the collaging in of small fragments, and as previously
mentioned, the infusion of sound for greater sensory impact. Digital technology also offers
different possibilities for exploring touch. For instance, combining various works into a
digital book or interactive projections on screens in public spaces could enable intimate
contact by viewers in any location. I am also looking at ways to activate and enlarge my
dolls, so they can live in the painted kanthas. In terms of the innovative transformation of
tradition into digital mediums, future research will examine the works of Shazia Sikander.
Her intriguing subject matter at times drawn from recognisable kantha motifs, (such as
Krishna riding a horse that is made up of the bodies of gopis, or cowherd women) but where
74
Sikander symbolically sets them free by virtually drawing out strands of their hair in her Gopi
Contagion (2005), make her an excellent subject of study.
In addition, I will extend my research by closely examining Nalini Malani’s works across a
range of mediums that include painting, writing, video and installation, and consider how
literary sources, historical events and contemporary dialogues are interpreted and played out
in her works. Both artists draw from their roots in South Asia as well as from transcultural
sources, and a study of their practices shall extend my research into women’s perspectives
from the region. The principles of reparation and restitution touched on in this body of
research can also be further theorised as I translate kantha principles into the digital realm.
`
35. Natasha Narain. 201. Images (actual and digitally manipulated) of the cotton sheet, drawn on during
Mapping Nurture.
During this project, I investigated the connection between the traditionally female craft of
kantha, the social history of Bengal, the artists in my contextual review, and my own creative
practice as research. I found a shared interest in exploring the layers and overlaps between
material and non-material culture, and observed how a distinctive creative voice emerges. I
began to appreciate how significantly history and material culture have formed my identity
75
and how these flow into my practice and my ways of making meaning. That which seems
automatic can also be traced back to inherited ways of practice and thinking. As an artist, my
challenge has been to explore the interstices between the known and the unknown through
making, where each mark records a life breath, a moment in time and a seed, holding
potential. This work reflects on what gives our lives meaning, and whether meaning is a
linear or singular truth or multiple, blurred and overlapping truths. I have had to acknowledge
how all that is familiar can swiftly become nothing and conversely, that everything can be
built again from nothing. Being shaped by the world without, we often need to travel within
to make sense of things and access the history within us. Doing so activates our own
responses as solutions and unfolds as history in the making. I have concluded that by utilising
the conceptual and aesthetic methods of kantha described in this document, the contemporary
artist can effectively make this journey between history and the present. A reinterpretation of
kantha offers a holistic approach to the self and the world.
76
Bibliography
Anderson, Clare. 2009. “Convicts and coolies: rethinking indentured labour in the nineteenth
century”. In Slavery and Abolition: a journal of slave and post-slave studies, 30 (1). 93-
109. Taylor & Francis (Routledge). http://hdl.handle.net/2381/9816
Bernal, Abigail. 2015. “A World Unfolds: The role of the vernacular in APT8.” In the
catalogue for The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, edited by Gallery of
Modern Art, 162-199. Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery.
Butalia, Urvashi. 2000. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Brockelman, Thomas P. 2001. The frame and the mirror: On collage and the postmodern.
Ewanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clement, Catherine and Kristeva, Julia. 2001. The feminine and the sacred. Translated by
Jane Marie Todd. New York: Columbia University Press.
Chakravorty, Sanjoy.2008. "Kolkata." In Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern World, New
York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Peter N. Stearns.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195176322.001.0001.
Datta, Ella. 2014. Other Narratives/Other Structures: Selected works of Arpita Singh. New
Delhi: Vadehra art Gallery Publication.
D’Costa, Bina. 2012. Nation building, Gender and war Crimes in South Asia. Routledge.
Taylor and Francis. (Accessed 20 May 2017).
Das, Veena. 1996. “Language and Body: Transactions in the construction of Pain.” In Social
Suffering: Daedalus. 125(1):67-91.M.I.T Press.
Dhar, Pulak Naranyan. 1987. “Bengal Renaissance: A Study in Social Contradictions.” Social
Scientist, 15 (1): 26-45. Doi: 10.2307/3517400.
Doniger, Wendy. 2015. The Hindus: An Alternative History, Delhi: Speaking Tiger books.
Ghosh, Pika. 2010., “Embroidering Bengal: Kantha Imagery and Regional Identity.” In
Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal, edited by Darielle Mason, 81-113.
Philadelphia: Yale University Press.
Green, Miranda. 1999. “Introduction.” In The concept of the Goddess, edited by Sandra
Billington and Miranda Green, 1-7. London: Routledge
Gunn, A. “Bengal, India, Famine.” In Encyclopaedia of Disasters. Chapter 18, Volume One.
California: Greenwood Publishing Group. 2007.
77
Hall, Fiona. QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art). 2010. “Fiona Hall
discusses Tender.” You Tube video posted December 20, 2010, Accessed December
19, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_-3d75ZItg
Hall, Fiona. 2011. Moat. Exhibited Brisbane: UQ Art Museum, Tongan tapa dye and Tongan
ochre on canvas. 209 x 317 cm. (Viewed 17 May 2017).
Hacker, Katherine. 1999. “Displaying a Tribal Imaginary: Known and Unknown India.”
Museum of Anthropology 23 (3):5-25.
Hacker, Katherine. 2010. “Embroidering Bengal: Kantha Imagery and Regional Identity.” In
Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal, edited by Darielle Mason, 59-80.
Philadelphia: Yale University Press.
Harding, Sandra.1996. “Science is good to think with.” In Science Wars, edited by Andrew
Ross.16-28. Durham. Duke University press.
Jayaker, Pupul. 1989. The Earth Mother. India: Penguin Books.
Kapur, Geeta.1993. “A Stake in Modernity: Brief history of Contemporary Indian Art.” In
Tradition and change: Contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific, edited by Caroline
Turner, 27-44. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Kee, Joan, 2007. “What Is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art?” In Global
Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, edited by Maura Reilly and Linda
Nochlin, 106–21. New York: Merrell.
Kim Y, 2011. Needlewoman Kimsooja, Korean Artists Today, Arts Council, Korea.
http://www.kimsooja.com/images/works/installations/Continua_2008.html
Klages M. 2012. Key terms in literary theory. New York. Continnum International publishing
group.
Kramrisch S and Tagore A. 1939. “Kantha.” Journal of Indian Society of Oriental Art.
(7):141-67.1525.
Kristeva, J and Clement C. 2001. The feminine and the sacred. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Kristeva, Julia.1986. “Revolution in Poetic Language.” In The Kristeva Reader, edited by
Toril Moi. 89-136.New York: Columbia University Press.
Malani, Nalini. 2005. Mother India: Transactions in the construction of pain. Exhibited
Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Five Channel video (viewed 3 May 2012).
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/338.2011.a-f/
78
Mason, Darielle. 2010. “Background Texture.” In The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal, edited
by Darielle Mason. 1-29. Philadelphia: Yale University Press.
Mascaro, Juan. 1965. “Introduction.” In The Upanishads, edited by Betty Radice, 7-8.
London: Penguin Books.
Michael L, 2016, Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time, National Gallery of Australia, Exhibition
catalogue.
Mukherjee, J. 2011. “Hungry Bengal: War, Famine, Riots and the End of Empire.” PhD
Thesis, University of Michigan.
Mukherjee, M. 2011. Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the ravaging of India
during World War II. 2nd Ed. New York: The Perseus Books Group.
Mookherjee, N. (2015). The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the
Bangladesh War of 1971.Durham: Duke Publishers.
Peck Amy. 2014 “What is the Sacred Feminine?” In Voices of the Sacred Feminine:
Conversations to Re-Shape Our World, edited by Karen Tate, 15-22, Croydon:
Changemakers Books and John Hunt Publishing. Available from: Pro Quest E Book
Central. Accessed 13 August 2017.
Reid-Bowen, P. 2016. Goddess as Nature: towards a Philosophical Theology. 2nd Ed. New
York: Routledge. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
Sen, Amartya K. 1977. “Starvation and exchange entitlements: a general approach and its
application to the great Bengal famine.” Cambridge Journal of Economics (1) 33-59.
Shamdasani, S. 2009. The Red Book: Liber Novus by Jung C.G. 1875-1961. Reader’s Ed.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Sigur Rós. 2016. Sigur Rós - Route One [Part 2 - 1080p].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbGc7ymFhQ.
Sigur Rós. 2015. Sigur Rós - Valtari. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fegCzRXZGAE
Singh Arpita: http://www.vadehraart.com/arpita-singh-other-narratives-other-structure/
Subramanyan, Kalpathi G. 1978. The struggle for image in contemporary Art: Moving Focus.
New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi.
Subramanyan, Kalpathi G, 1987. The Living Tradition: perspectives on Modern Indian Art,
1st ed. Kolkata (Calcutta): Seagull Books. Vequaud, Yves. 1977. The Art of Mithila:
Ceremonial paintings from an Ancient Kingdom, London: Thames and Hudson.
Vaughan, Kathleen. 2004. “Pieced together: Collage as an artist’s method for
interdisciplinary research” International Journal of Qualitative Methods. 4(1), article 3.
79
Vequaud, Yves.1977. The Art of Mithila: Ceremonial paintings from an Ancient Kingdom,
London: Thames and Hudson.
Zaman, Niaz. 2010. “Women’s words/ women’s voices in the Kantha.” In Kantha: The
embroidered quilts of Bengal, edited by Darielle Mason, 115-138. Philadelphia: Yale
University Press.