The Gujarat Earthquake

The 2001 Gujarat earthquake killed more than 25,000 people, injured many more and left millions of people homeless. Gujarat is a troubled state, with a history of history of religious conflict since the 1960s. In a riot in 2002, at least 1000 people were killed, most of them Muslims. The Chitrakar community is predominantly Muslim, but they practice many Hindu customs in a relationship of tolerance and respect.

In the The Gujarat Earthquake scroll, Mantu Chitrakar (India b.1960s) celebrates the strength of the community in Gujarat who came together to face the disaster and help neighbours and friends.

Patachitra, or ‘pats’, are scroll paintings from West Bengal, intimately bound up with itinerant storytelling and songs. Historically, patachitra were cloth scrolls on which mythological or epic stories were painted as a sequence of frames. The artists (patua) would travel from village to village, slowly unrolling the scrolls and singing the stories. Patachitras have been compared to cinema frames or animation, and are said to be one of the oldest forms of audiovisual communication.

Exhibited in 'The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' (APT8) | 21 Nov 2015 – 10 Apr 2016