Drawing and color strategies through India´s tribal art

Abstract

The following article analyses the process of creating tribal drawings and votive designs on the houses` walls of the villages in India, focusing particularly on the ritual murals related to the marriage events of the Mithila and Warli ethnic groups. Usually made by the village´s women, these drawings are normally requests for marriage and fertility to the Gods, closely linked to the productivity of the crops and to the ancestral tantric thought. Despite the fact that this paper´s aim is the study of ethnic drawing from an aesthetic perspective, it is also related to the anthropological or sociological aspects of the context in which they are made, being the ritualistic process of creating the mural design more important than the final result itself. Currently, the tourist industry and global capitalism have provided a path for these women´s economic independence, who had started to transfer their drawings to paper in order to sell them as souvenirs.

KEYWORDS: Tribal Art, India, Tantra, Goddess, Ritual.