Visualising Oral Traditions
In any non-writing culture, the transmission of practical know how’s, moral compasses, social taboos and the manners of speech, maintain themselves through the telling and retelling of stories. However, across the modern world, the amplitude of such oral cultures is shrinking, their voices often drowned in an era dominated by the written and the visual. Yet within this decline, there exists a possibility: the very communities that have ensured continuum of these narratives for generations are now adapting, using visual mediums as new vessels for disseminating oral knowledge.
The exhibition explores how stories once solely spoken and sung, find expression through visual narratives. A collaboration between Kailash Pradhan and Ajay Marko, Gond Pradhaan artists with Gangaram Uikey and Narayandeen Tekam, oral storytellers from the same community, this exhibition presents the active passing of smriti (memory) within the Pradhaan Gonds and a dialogue between orality and visuality, tradition and reinvention.
The facilitation of this process of memory transfer has been made possible by Smt Apoorva Mishra and Shri Achyut Siddu of Loksutr, who have been working closely with the tribal communities in Anuppur and Dindori in Madhya Pradesh
Inauguration by Shri Udayan Vajpeyi, Raza Foundation on Thursday, 20 March 2025 at 18:30 hrs
(Collaboration: Loksutr)
