Gayatri Devi of Bhelwara village in Hazaribagh is star struck and cannot stop smiling. This is for the first time that she got to meet the Tinsel Town celebrities, whom she used to see only on the television and big screens.
Gaytri Devi and Malo Devi are the two Sohrai and Khovar artists of the State who are participating the six-day ‘Junoon’, an art exhibition organised by The Asian Heritage Foundation (AHF) at Hotel Grand Hyatt in Mumbai, which is being attended by a number of Bollywood celebrities.
The festival, organised to mark 10 years of AHF’s project, Jiyo, a self empowering programme for creating new livelihoods in creative and cultural industries in rural India is providing a platform to empower the indigenous, grassroot level artist by exhibiting art from various States including Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
The programme, which is to conclude on April 4, has already witnessed celebrities like Jaya Bachchan, Nandita Das, Poonam Dhillon and Shabana Azmi visiting the venue and interacting with the artists.
“I could not believe that Jaya Bachchan, who I used to see on the television sets, was actually standing there in front of me, watching me work,” Gayatri Devi said.
Gayatri and Malo were accompanied by Justin and Alka Imam of Virasat Foundation, a social organisation supporting these tribal artists at village level in Hazaribagh.
“The artists managed to interact with some of the superstars. In fact, Bachchan loved the art so much that she showed interest in having a piece in her house. She said there is a mud wall like area in her house where she would want to get the Sohrai art painted,” Justin Imam said.
The team from Hazaribagh exhibited 11 cement blocks, 8 feet X 4 feet each, portraying the tribal art of marriage (Khovar) and harvest (Sohrai). The cement blocks were carried from Jharkhand to Mumbai on train. Also, there is a separate section where the two artists are giving a live demonstration of their paintings.
Malo Devi said, “We never thought that something which we do to keep our house clean and beautiful can actually attract so much attention. Getting appreciation from the celebrities definitely raises our moral.” Apart from Sohrai and Khovar, the bamboo art of Gumla district also proved to be a major attraction at the exhibition. The home décor and furniture made by the four tribal artisans of Gumla has been designed by Ahmedabad based architectural and interior designer Jwalant Mahadevwala.
Also, a food stall by women from Churchu block of Hazaribagh selling items like Mahua pickle, bamboo pickle and others edible items have proven to be quite a hit.
Other celebrities from fields like acting, literary, art and others who are scheduled to pay a visit to the exhibition in the next three days include Aditi Rao Hydari, Rahul Bose, Shobha De, Javed Akhtar, Shekhar Kapur, Konkona Sen, Manish Malhotra among others.