What is Madhubani Art?
Madhubani Art is a style of Indian Painting, named after a district in Bihar, India. It is known for:
A. Stark Geometrical Patterns
B. Vibrant Colors
C. Side Profiles of Characters Madhubani Art often depicts scenes from Hindu epics, people’s relationship with nature, or nature itself.
The Project
In our Hindi class, we were tasked with creating our own Madhubani art piece. In most language classes, we become familiar with a culture’s spoken word, but rarely the other aspects. It was nice to be fully immersed in the visual art of Indian Culture.
We were specifically asked to focus on a social issue in our artwork. Hence, I wanted to focus on something that I had been actively researching at the time: AI Responsibility and Data Privacy.
The Process
It was not easy to put a very technical topic like Data Privacy into a picture, especially a Madhubani one. There were themes that I wanted to focus on:
1) Humans can’t escape the eye of technology
2) How all data can be found easily, no matter who you are
3) How one person can have access to the immense amount of information
I iterated through scenes that could capture these themes, and eventually fell onto the idea above: A single man on a computer able to search through thousands of people’s data. I used the magnifying glass to represent this search process through all the 0-1s i.e the data. Making it Madhubani
From above, we know that Madhubani Art has three distinct characteristics (probably way more but for this project, I focused on the three above).
Often, these types of projects can be overwhelming. Where do I even start?
Our instructor Dr. Knapczyk made it very simple for us. In our first session, all we did was focus on the border. The border for Madhubani Art, while a small part, is very important. It draws attention to the scene, while also resembling the themes being spoken to in the core picture. Afterward a community guest artist came to our class. The guest Dr. Priyanka Singh demonstrated Madhubani art. Dr. Singh teaches Hindi at Delhi University, and she also researches and practices different forms of Indian regional style art, including Madhubani art. She showed some samples of the Madhubani art while explaining the art background in Hindi.
In the class, I started to draw the figures. Inspired by previous Madhubani Art, I drew all side profiles. For each side profile, I drew a different color to encapsulate how there are many different kinds of people. The blue figures inspired by the Hindu epics of Rama & Krishna. I also made sure to color the computer, clothing, figures, and background with many vibrant colors, to capture the colorful essence of Madhubani Art. For example, notice the cotton candy-colored train coming from the border of the table.
The train represents the stream of data used for the search process, reminiscent of the “train of thought”. I also tried my best to draw every shape using geometries inspired by Madhubani Art. The computer, the table, the tree, and the people are all drawn to Madhubani art standards.
Lessons Learned
The Madhubani Art Project was a very valuable experience for me. I was able to take a problem I’m passionate about and use that passion to fuel my learning about a unique part of Indian culture, Madhubani Art.
It was great stepping into the shoes of a Madhubani artist, thinking about how they work within the constraints of Madhubani Art, while also breaking those rules to make something creative, something new.
Hindi class Madhubani art can be found here.
https://sites.duke.edu/dukehindi/2021/10/25/690/
This workshop was supported by Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Duke Service-learning and David L. Paletz Innovative Teaching.
Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies