No art Wasted

Upcoming sculptor-painter Narayan Sinha creates beauty out of waste material and gives 'recycling' a new meaning. 
Old fashioned iron lock and keys, window and balcony grills - such abandoned household items or automobile scraps. Give them to Narayan Sinha, an upcoming sculpture-painter from Nalhati, a far flung hamlet in Bengal's Birbhum district, and he will turn them into objet-de-art. You can call it a metamorphosis or an evolution of a unique kind where quirky stuffs attain the stature of the exquisite.

A time when going green is the watchword, Sinha's work using recycled products, is all the more relevant. His use of metals like copper and brass which are becoming obsolete in the country also marks his contribution in upholding the cultural heritage. He has used a cart wheel as a chandelier, old window frames for the back rest of furniture. And in his recent interior designing project of transforming an old house into an art boutique named EKRU in Kolkata, he has used materials like cement, gravel, vegetable dye and cloth as raw material.

Creation is what has come best to Sinha since childhood. The journey started with clay modelling during school vacations. But staying at Nalhati he often faced the problem of obtaining clay, the primary raw material. His father was a dealer of automobile parts; so he often toyed with these parts and his imagination used to take flight. The result was new forms made from the unused tools and machines. After his graduation Sinha became a full time sculptor. In order to fine-tune his art he learnt anatomy, clay and charcoal painting from art students of Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Sinha's work came into limelight with his first exhibition in 2000 at Bajaj Bhavan, Mumbai. Afterwards, there was no looking back. An array of exhibitions including the ones at Nehru Centre, Worli and Jahangir Art Gallery in Mumbai and Birla Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata, followed. The exhibition at Birla Academy had some of his unique masks made of junk and a new trend was set.

Sinha's subjects are intrinsically traditional and Indian in essence. "I can't work on abstract forms as I can't relate to him. My subjects are emotional responses and I try to reach a Higher Being through sculpture. My other aspiration is to promote Indian art and artists. I have assistants at my workshops who were school dropouts. I gave them the necessary training and they are now artists working with me," he says.

Sinha's sculptures have already adorned Kolkata's sprawling and historic Raj Bhavan (Governor's House) and Writers' Buildings (State government headquarters).

Accolades and recognitions are not new to Sinha as his successful exhibitions in New York, Paris and many other countries have got rave reviews. Four years of research and practice and Sinha now has to his credit as many as 35 different forms of Goddess Durga made from trivia. His exhibition of the forms named 'Debi' was a huge success in Kolkata and has received invitations from the other parts of India and also rest of the world.

Sinha narrates a saga of fusion between craftsmanship and sculpture through his art. "My objective was to endow a contemporary look to the traditional forms and figures," he says. It calls for rigorous research and long hours for each of his creation which varies from three to four days to 3 months. "I spend long hours, sometimes 14 to 18 hours a day, to give shapes to my creations. Collecting and sourcing the unusual stuff was another painstaking and time consuming affair. I have gathered material from different parts of the country like Rajasthan, Gujarat, south India and so on which in turn has added diverse tinge of ethnicity to the end products" tells Sinha.

He has developed these sculptures at his large workshop at Nalhati with his students and team members. Some of these structures are as tall as 9.6 ft to 10 ft. There are some paintings of him as well on the walls to create an overall ambience.

Sinha insists on uniqueness. Not one of his work would find a repetition. It's like a boutique product. He also carefully studies different forms of traditional architecture in different parts of the country and tries to reflect them in his creations.

Sinha is versatile too. His jewellery in brass, pearl and semi precious stones which are available in different boutiques in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Pune feature in the well-known fashion show circuit. Handmade jewellery and knick-knacks designed by him have graced Tina Ambani's Harmony Shows and are also used by fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee in his shows.

An Indian at heart, Sinha incubates the dream of representing Indian ethnicity in the global arena through his creations. He further aspires to reach art to the grassroots people. "Art has always been confined to the rich and aristocrats whereas music has transcended all barriers. I as an artist dream of bridging the social gaps through art which is possible just by reviving some everyday commodity like that of a kohl-container which has immense artistic nuances in it," he says.

Art for Change

Art as an agent of change 
Folk art forms have been with rural communities for centuries but now artists have been encouraged to develop them into new forms to ensure commercial success and empowerment, finds Baishali Mukherjee 

Moyna Chitrakar, a patua artist, specialises in scroll painting Photos: TWF

RESIDING in a faraway village in Nadia of West Bengal, nobody knew Golam Fakir as an artist six years ago. Belonging to a marginalised community and without formal education, Golam used to carry dead bodies from the police station to the morgue. His is a fascinating story of transformation - from a non-entity despised by many in the neighbourhood, to a celebrity singer Baul geet, a form of Bengal's folk song, in a span of six years.

He has performed all over India and has travelled to UK, Switzerland, France, Tunisia, Scotland and China. His income has gone up from around Rs 200 a month to Rs 30,000 now.

Golam narrates his experience through this journey in his own fashion, "I never thought of anything beyond my two meals few years back, and now I've the opportunity to travel across the globe and perform on stage with great musicians and performers, and represent my country in front of the global audience. It fills my heart when people appreciate and applaud Baul music," he says.

Moyna Chitrakar is a patua (from patachitra) artist who specialises in scroll painting of Bengal. Her story too reflects how women have been empowered through exposition of their art. Moyna and her husband Malekh used to earn about Rs 1,000 a month six years ago. Today, her family earns many times over. She has travelled with her paintings and other diversified products to different parts of India attending fairs and festivals. She even went to China to attend an industrial fair in Shenzhen. With her money she has also constructed a two-storey house in her village where tourists can stay. Moyna is a confident woman today and says, "We can concentrate on our work now as we don't need to worry about our next meal anymore."

Crafting this change since 2004 is banglanatak dot com, a social development organisation in Kolkata. Elucidating the process of change, Amitabha Bhattacharya, director, says, "Culture is a great enabler. It fosters social inclusion. Oral and performing art traditions are an asset for developing rural enterprise." New markets are created and new brands can be developed to promote traditional performing and visual arts and crafts, he points out. "Heritage becomes a means of livelihood and empowerment. The motto is 'To preserve art, let the artists survive'," he adds.

For Amitabha Bhattacharya, director, banglanatak.com, culture is an enabler

The ministry of culture, West Bengal, supported the initiative between 2005 and 2009. In December, 2009, the European Union provided support to the project named Ethno Magic Going Global (EGG) to take ethno art to the global arena. The project has created a tremendous impact, leading to socio economic development of the beneficiaries and their communities. With identity being changed from "daily unskilled labour" to "artist", they are now coming forward to participate even in the development process.

Revitalising and reviving these heritage skills as means of livelihood necessitates mobilising changes in mindset and attitudes as the folk artists become 'cultural service providers'. A comprehensive training and capacity building programmes was undertaken after the formation of a Self Help Group to help innovate new ways of rendering the traditional art forms. The aim was to establish a guru- shishya parampara- where skilled craftsmen pass on their knowledge to the practising artists.

Winds of change have now started blowing elsewhere too. Recently, LNG Petronet, one of the fastest growing companies in the Indian energy sector, has come up with the documentation of Swang- a popular form of folk theatre in rural Haryana and Punjab and an integral part of their rich cultural heritage. It aims at introducing the form among the connoisseurs to facilitate its preservation and promotion. However, awareness about this form of performing art is low among the urban youth or even among the modern theatre groups. According to Kishan Kumar, a theatre activist of Rohtak, Haryana, the government organizes Swang to raise money from the public for repair or construction of schools or roads. Its popularity may be gauged by the fact that around rupees two to three lakh was raised from a single performance of Swang in Haryana. "If made into compact and short productions, Swang can prove to be a popular entertainment form," feels Kamal Tewari, chairperson of Sangeet Natak Akademi in Chandigarh.

Singer Golam Fakir’s income has risen from Rs 200 to Rs 30,000 per month

Taking the cultural revival a step further, banglanatak dot com has also taken the initiative to incubate and enliven the age old art forms of Bihar from becoming moribund. Apart from the Madhubani painting no other folk form of Bihar is well-known today. Efforts are on to rejuvenate the feisty cultural inventory of Bihar that includes folk songs like Sohar, Nirgun, Kajri, and Byaas, dance like Jhijia, dramas like Ramleela, Nautanki etc, tribal dance like Santhali dance and crafts like sujni (embroidered quilts) and sikki (grass weaving). More than a thousand individuals with knowledge about these art forms have been identified under a project.

Apart from art forms, the scope for developing ethno-cultural tourism offering authentic experience of indigenous life is also being explored. From places like Gorbhanga, a village located in Nadia district that houses a band of Baul artists, Pingla, home to around 300 patuas in West Midnapore district and Jangal Mahal in Bengal, to Tinsukia in Assam and also Goa, are being developed as community led ethno-tourism destinations by exploring the traditional artistic skills of local population as primary resources. The important impact of developing tourism in these places will be restoration of peace in the disturbed areas of Bengal and Assam through inclusive growth of the aboriginal people of those areas.

In today's world of intolerance and unrest culture can prove to be a potential tool for establishing universal peace and brotherhood. For as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said "Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture." — TWF