‘Living Lightly: Journey With Pastoralists’, an exhibition held in December 2016 at IGNCA, New Delhi, was co-designed by me in collaboration with Sahjeevan and the Foundation for Ecological Security. The exhibition, curated by Mrs Sushma Iyengar, offered an insight into the lightly lived lives of the nomads, focussing primarily but not entirely on the Maldharis, a nomadic tribe of herdsmen from the Banni region of Kutch.
Photo by Nipun Prabhakar
Held in the galleries and grounds of IGNCA, the exhibition was designed to house the crafts associated with the life of pastoralists and to understand a herder’s life. The thematics of the gallery was designed to hold the stories of the Craft Trail together, one flowing into the other seamlessly.
Top Left and Top middle photo by Yuki Masuzumi
Within the Craft Trail, a section was dedicated to an immersive soundscape installation inspired by the music and poetry of the Maldharis. Coined as ‘Rooh Ji Rehaan’, this installation was designed to be experienced as 6 sequential zones representing different times of the day and the corresponding soundscape specially created for the exhibit. Visitors were expected to trek down a zigzag corridor lined with layers of cloths displaying lyrics of ethnic songs echoing the musical and literary richness of the region that revels in folk tales about Hindu and Islamic hero-heroines. The visitors were given an option of carrying a portable audio device with a playlist of 26 curated songs which they could listen to along the walk. Alternatively, each zone had their dedicated ambient soundscape which can be experienced without the audio device, if the visitor chooses to do so
Top two Photo by Nipun Prabhakar
The outdoor grounds were designed to house the Craft Shop hosted by Khameer. A massive weather-proof bamboo structure was created to house a wide range of exclusive collection, specially curated for the exhibition. The mud-coloured bazaar with a rustic ambience was articulated with various livestock animals like cattles, bulls, camels goats etc made of fabric displayed as installations, dried camel dung cakes, charpoys with colourful quilts on them. Mashru and Bandhini fabrics were used to create a rural shamiana. The earthy brown tones of the bazaar unified the aesthetic of the merchandise and had a resonance of the aesthetics used in the indoor exhibit.
