Museum of the alpona:Save traditional art. Please Help

Museum of the alpona:Save traditional art

Please Help

Hello,

My application is that We are make a traditional art museum.My name is Rabi Biswas. I am traditional alpona artist. I want to create a museum for traditional alpona.Where the ordinary people of the village will have beautiful work. Whereas I can help the common people of the village through this work. This art is going to be lost today. We are all trying to save the alpona art.That’s why you’re asking for help. I trying togo discuss about alpana.

What is alpona art?

Alpona (Ritual Painting) is a kind of folk art and a spontaneous expression of the artistic sensibility of people. It retains the past experience of the community and, at the same time, is very much contemporary in feeling. It is mainly the womenfolk who have kept the art alive in this part of the subcontinent. They retain connections with age-old traditions and at the same time are bold enough to experiment with new forms and new colours. They are conscious of the changing moods of the seasons and their creativity thus marks the changing cycle of the year.

THE REASON FOR THIS ALPANA MUSEUM

1.Save this art.

2.Help people in the village.

3.Can be associated with the roots of our country.

4.Everybody will know about this art.

My Fieldwork

Like many other communities alpona plays a critical aspect in the live and customs of the rural women folks of Bengal. I have made a field work at a couple of pristine village at Nadia district beside Jalangi River under Dhubulia police station. These people are living a life of low-circuit economy with a subaltern lifestyle. Most of them are fisherfolks(Jele, Koiborto),Ghosh, and lowcust muslims. Their main livelihood is agriculture works beside their own cast base livelihood options.

Representations in Alpona have become conventional to a certain extent for these communities. these are the work of self expressions. One can find a certain mechanical monotony, a stereotyped symmetry in the design of Alpona, yet the inherent vitality of the motifs of these designs is such that it invariably asserts itself through the conventional fetters. On the other hand, the separation and uniformity of the motifs in these designs give a subtle character and a utilitarian aspect to the Alpona. Circular Alpona is used as a holy pedestal in the time of worshipping a deity, especially in the case of Laksmipuja. Motifs used in Alpona are: sun, rice stem, owl, ladder, plough, leg of goddess Laksmi, fish, betel, lotus, shankhalata, container of sindur etc.

The social decoration and ritual part also plays great role in the life of the communities at large. These communities also decorates their house, pathways, banks of the river by using holding rags in their palms and generate movements using finger as a generator of the figures, motiffs(Thaat) They use the riceflower/ricepowder as a main ingredients of Alpona. The main motifs came from various life utilities.

We can create two distinct departure of this Nadia alpona one is religious ritual another is social. This creates a great departure point inrelation to other Indian peers of Bengali alpona.

I have pointed out some of the motifs(thats)- human figure, fish, handfan, fruits, flower, leaf, utility utensils, nature, cosmology and many more unknown motifs. In these drawings I have asked these women of culture if they can identify these unknown thaats or not as they inherited these art forms from their mothers’ and other ancestors, they told that though they could not identify these unidentified objects with other living objects of their lives.

Rabi Biswa

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