The Gond Tiger Project
An understanding through candid conversations with CCDF’s resident designer Anmol Yadav.
The Gond Tiger Project
The seed of the idea
As we started working with the traditional artisans at the Crafts and community development foundation, we experimented a lot with different mediums like canvases, paper and cloth. These artists, who traditionally painted murals, have been adapting to different mediums to create art, for quite some time now, so that they are able to cater to the modern art market demands. As a result, they were quite comfortable with these mediums, even though it wasn’t traditional. Hence, it gave us the space to experiment even further and this time with the art form itself by adding modern elements to it. And the changes we suggested were very welcome and were well accepted by the artisans who saw their art in a new light and also by the modern art connoisseurs who were looking at this amalgamation as a novel attempt. Learning from the success of this first experiment, we decided to explore more, this time with 3D sculptures. So, what started as a little test project, yielded a piece of art we all could not even have imagined ourselves.
The Tiger
We decided to produce a painted life size tiger sculpture taking references from the 'year of the tiger- 2022’. Here a quote from scholar Jonathan H.X. Lee will shed light on why we were inspired by the tiger, “The tiger embodies courage and bravery, so the new year could symbolize resilience and strength — even in times of struggle.” This symbolism almost felt like a resonance of all that we stand for as an organization; courage, strength and resilience in times of hardship.
This motif of the tiger is equally important in the context of India as well. Tiger is an endangered species, and the need to conserve and grow the tiger population in India is a pertinent environmental issue.
The tiger imagery holds a special reverential place for the Gond tribal art community too. All tribal art is very closely linked to nature and celebrates the harmony between man and the wild. The tiger is also a consistently occurring motif in Gond paintings as it is worshiped as the ancestor of the community. With such laden connotations the tiger seemed like the perfect next direction for CCDF and for the artisans.
The Process
Different material bases were tried out, but we eventually zeroed it down to fibreglass as it can be easily painted over, and it is pretty light to handle. As we got the first sample done in fibreglass, we got one of our artisans, Kishan Ji, on board with us to add art to this sample. Working on a 3D surface was a first for many artists and initially was slightly challenging but Kishan Ji took the challenge sportingly and was quite willing to see his art take, never seen before, a new shape. The intention was to create an art piece that told a story and that story should be such that it lingers on the entire silhouette of the tiger. After going back and forth with various ideas, two stories were finalized and these tie into one common theme of harmony between man and natural forces. These stories were then sketched over the surface of the tiger. The entire process of beginning from the creation of just the one tiger sculpture to the ideation, the painting and the completion took almost two months in total. While the ideation process continued for over a month, it took 10 days to just paint the complete sculpture and to get the finer details right. The process and the end result were so rewarding, that even though it was challenging in the beginning, all the artists welcomed the new project with open arms.
The art; colours and motifs
The colours chosen were acrylic and the colour palette that was picked was extremely contemporary in flavour. The motifs were intentionally a mix of both contemporary and Gondi traditional folk shapes, which is true to the essence of CCDF. On one side, the composition depicts the story of the relationship between Baiga and Baigin Adivasis as the guardians of the forest coexisting with various animals living in harmony within the jungle. On the other side, it showcases Jungle Devi who is worshipped by the Baiga Adivasis before they cut woods from the forest which provided them with their livelihood.
The whole body of the tiger is a reverential piece to the various forces of nature which are essential for the survival of this community. This story of harmony is beautifully encapsulated onto the tiger, which is a motif often recurring in Gond paintings as it is also worshipped as their ancestor. The contemporary tones and modern patterns add a new perspective to these centuries-old folk tales.
Future of this project
Our resident designer states with hope, “This is just the beginning, we have such big plans with the project!” The idea is to create many stories and showcase various different styles of this miracle of material and let the creativity of artisans find ways of expression that they have not explored yet.
As the world moves towards digitisation, and printing a copy costs only a dime- it is important we explore directions that are yet unthought of. Experimentation is the only answer to this issue, if we constantly explore, we will reclaim a space for the folk artisans that will help them with their livelihoods at the micro-level, and that would help the tribal art form survive at the macro cultural level.
Below are some images from the public release of The Gond Tiger Project during CCDF’s first offline exhibition of 2022 held at the India International Centre, Annexe, Delhi (an India Art Fair parallel event)
Our work @ CCDF
We at CCDF, for our flagship project ‘The Gondwana Art Project’, collaborate with traditional tribal artists and they are selected through an assessment of the quality of work and their current economic status. These artists are taken in for a residency programme and are provided with a stipend during their residency with the organization. They are guided and given mentorship as well to make their art more suited to contemporary needs. Mr Sundeep Bhandari, our founder sees it as an opportunity for exploration of traditional artistic creativity by bringing it to the forefront.‘The Gond tiger project’ is our new flagship initiative, we plan to produce 19 more (edition of 20) such tiger sculptures in different folk art styles and we hope it is as successful as our first project.
This article is authored for Craft and Community Development Foundation by Shreya Seth.