Padma Shri Artist From Madhya Pradesh Once Worked As A Daily Wager, Earning Rs 6

Source The Better India by Gopi Karelia
Madhya Pradesh-based Bhuri Bai has experienced acute poverty first hand and has also worked as a child labourer just to be able to afford one square meal. When she was 10, her house was burnt down in a fire, so her family built a makeshift house from hay and lived there for years. She was a child bride and post-marriage survived on a meagre income of Rs 6 per day. When Bhuri finally found a breakthrough with Pithora painting, an enriched folk art, her Bhil tribe condemned her for it as women weren’t allowed to indulge in art forms. They even played the patriarchal card by suggesting her husband was not man enough to earn as much as Bhuri was earning through her paintings. However, the feisty Bhuri never let these adversities triumph over her innate talent and continued to move forward, using the skills of the ancient art. On 25 January, she reached the height of validation after receiving the prestigious Padma Shri for her contributions in preserving the traditional art form and taking it to the world stage. From Lucknow to London, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad to the United States and the United Kingdom, her paintings have travelled far and wide.
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Nicola Tarshito’s love affair with India continues to inform his artistic practice

Source Mint Lounge by Avantika Bhuyan
Nicola Strippoli first came to India from Italy in the 1980s after graduating from the Faculty of Architecture in Florence, with a thesis in street theatre. Like many others from the West, who came to the country in that period in search of enlightenment, he too headed to India on a spiritual quest. He ended up meeting a teacher, who taught him the use of meditation as a method of investigation and design, and also gave him the name Tarshito, meaning thirst for inner knowledge. In the course of his travels, he came across different folk traditions and sought to collaborate with its practitioners. Over time he has worked with 21 different traditional forms, and his engagement with four of these can be seen in Gallery Threshold’s ongoing showcase, India: Mirror of the Self, as part of the digital showcase, TAP 4x: India.
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Sculptor Adip Dutta’s tribute to his mentor Meera Mukherjee

Source The Telegraph by Anannya Sarkar
Tracing back the journey and practice of artist and sculptor Adip Dutta and the influence of the late, revered artist Meera Mukherjee on his art through the unique relationship that he shared with his “Meera mashi” is Nestled, Experimenter’s latest exhibit at their Hindustan Road gallery space. Mukherjee’s practice of incorporating folk traditions and indigenous practices into her art finds place in the form of hand-embroidered works of kantha in this exhibition that are a product of her “constant push in imbibing and expanding processes juxtaposing them with Dutta’s works on paper, sculptures and drawings”. Dutta’s method of repetitive mark-making within his drawings establish a conversation between Mukherjee’s kantha works with the commonality between them spanning small lines, dots and dashes.
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Everything you need to know about the 9th Mumbai Gallery Weekend 2021

Source Architectural Digest by Shaikh Ayaz
Mumbai's cultural scene is warming up again. Over the weekend, stop by these events at the 9th MGW (January 14-17) that blur the line between art and design : Atelier Ashiesh Shah, at Indigo Bungalow / Rooshad Shroff, at Rooshad Shroff Gallery, Fort / Bhupen and Jogen, at Akara Art / SH Raza, Somnath Hore, Anju Dodiya and more, at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke / Anju Dodiya, Nikhil Chopra, Rashid Rana and Nityan Unnikrishnan at Chatterjee & Lal / / Lubna Chowdhary at, Jhaveri Contemporary / Lekha Washington Studio, at Jamaat / Rekha Rodwittiya and Riyas Komu, at Sakshi Gallery / Aditi Singh, at Chemould Prescott Road / Rithika Merchant, at TARQ / Shilo Shiv Suleman, at Art Musings / Shaikh Wajid Shaikh, at Art and Charlie / Abhishek Salve, Kumar Misal and Roshan Anvekar, at Priyasri Art Gallery / Tyler, at Method / K G Subramanyan, at Saffronart
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