Tradition and novelty: A folk artist’s experiment with the comics medium

This essay seeks to problematise the conception of folk art and craft traditions of scholars such as Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, who assume that while these are the repositories of India’s ancient heritage, the practitioners of these crafts are humble vessels who pass them on faithfully without much understanding of their inherent meaning. Coomaraswamy’s work may seem dated in comparison with contemporary scholarship in the field, but his ideas continue to inform how craft production is largely perceived. By focusing on the experimental work of one Chitrakar artist from West Bengal who tried to adapt her traditional style of pata (scroll) painting to the comics medium, I argue that it is the perspective used to study the folk arts that leads to the conception that folk artists are unreflexive and unable to generate new ideas on their own. Swarna Chitrakar, the artist whose work is presented here, belongs to a traditional community of picture storytellers. Her exposure to the comics medium in a workshop organised by a publisher of children’s books led her to introduce some of its pictorial devices in her work, thereby enabling her to depict emotions in novel ways. I argue that it is by focusing on the work of individual artists as well as by including non-traditional spaces of production and performance within their fields of study, that scholars will be able to reconceptualise the folk arts as dynamic and contemporary, rather than as archaic and static.