Prajwal Naitam is a young artist who likes to call one of her paintings the Bamboo Girl, using Gond folklore she creates narratives of the present using a distinct vocabulary not drawn from the Sir JJ School of Art’s neo-classic western academic style nor does she use tropes and formulae derived from Gond wall painting traditions. Most of the subject she highlights from her people’s folklore revolves around the role of women. These stories sit well metaphorically in the contemporary.
Hailing from Eastern Maharashtra her home town Chandrapur was founded by a Gond Dynasty the Chandas as was Nagpur and this entire belt until Sirpur in Telangana was Gond country. Successive invasions of the Mughals and Marathas saw them change territory. Today Maharashtra is home to the third largest population of Gond people after Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. They populate the entire Gondwana plate and are a distinct community with a language called Gondi, their own definition of the cosmos, communal rituals and pantheon of animist forest gods. Chandrapur is home to the Tadoba Tiger reserve which holds Maharashtra’s largest population of tigers whilst the rest of the district’s landscape is degraded by coal mining.
A little booklet describes the process of making Mahua alcohol whilst her landscapes reveal the stories that revere the bamboo which is an auspicious plant. We all have loved the practices of Jangarh Singh Shyam, Bhajju Shyam, Venkat Syam and Japani Syam. But when young Gond artists even in the contemporary are forced to use the patterns they developed to ascertain their inclusion under vague terms such as vernacular or tribal art thus disallowing their participation in the larger contemporary art scene it leads to decoration. Decorative art is not synonymous for something being beautiful rather when any form or palette begins to form a repetitive pattern that is distinguishable and recognised - it becomes a decoration. This is to be avoided by any artist and they can fall into such a trap at a mature juncture in their practice.
