Art, Craft, People and Place in Jharkhand

A survey of the vernacular arts and crafts of Jharkhand, with the goal of learning more about links between craft, community and landscape, and how these have changed over time. Jharkhand is home to a number of vernacular arts and crafts still carried out in a rural setting, for example, lost wax metal casting, scroll painting, cotton weaving, wood carving, etc. Women painters from Ganju, Prajapati, Santal, Oraon, Munda and other communities still create Khovar (wedding) and Sohrai (harvest festival) murals, painting in mud on the mud walls of their homes. But the landscape of Jharkhand – dominated by river plains and hill tracts covered in sal jungle – and the communities that live in it, are under considerable stress from mineral extraction. We hope to use a survey of the arts and crafts to learn more about how communities are responding to these pressures. Art, Craft, People and Place in Jharkhand is being conducted in collaboration with the Sanskriti Museum and Art Gallery, Hazaribagh.