Pattachitra to Kalamkari, Sorai to Aipan: How tweaked folk art turns spotlight on dwindling wildlife

Bengaluru, NT Bureau: What started as someone's personal project during Covid lockdown has turned into a successful tool for many state forest departments to educate the world about the wildlife of the region.

Bhubaneshwar-based graphic designer, Sudarshan Shaw, a 2016 NIFT graduate in communication design, quit his regular design job in Delhi just before Covid struck to explore his passion, ‘conservation through folk art'.

He said Covid break offered him an opportunity to plunge into it headlong. "Conservation through folk art was my graduation project and I always knew that there was more to it than what I presented. After I returned to Bhubaneshwar, I started freelancing while simultaneously digging deeper into folk arts of various regions," said Shaw over the phone.

He said the local art is the ‘language of the land' that crucial stakeholders of conservation projects, the tribals and locals, can read.

"Folk arts of India is an age-old visual language that is native to India and hence best represents and resonates with the masses," said Shaw.

His very first attempt, a biodiversity map of Odisha, which used motifs and colours typical to Pattachitra to put together a colourful map of the different species of wildlife in Orissa, forest-dwellers and age-old beliefs, was an instant hit among the netizens.

"It was a combination of motifs and descriptions, in which colours, figures and stories are born out of our very own soil and culture. Soon, in 2021, I was approached by the Andhra Pradesh forest department to explore such a map in a visual language unique to them."

Of course, Kalamkari became the obvious choice, and Shaw chose the Srikalahasti style after much deliberation. "It is a visual language unique to Andhra with its own interpretation of birds, animals, nature and everyday lives of people. So, it is apt that we use it to generate awareness about local biodiversity among the folks of the state," said Shaw.

Again, the success of the map paved the way for many more. These include elephant corridors in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, tiger corridors of central India, biodiversity maps of Rajasthan, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.

The latest is 'The Magical Melghats', launched by Maharashtra forest department in April to mark the 50 years of Melghat tiger reserve.

Right now, Shaw is working on a map for Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh as well as a coffee table book exploring the biodiversity of Ladakh, which will re-imagine the techniques used in thangka art of that region.