Madhubani Art Class Demonstration - “The Fish is the queen of the water (मछली जल की रानी है)”

Madhubani art and University of Delhi, Professor Priyanka Singh

Throughout our Hindi classes students are not only exposed to the language and grammar of Hindi but also to the culture of Hindi speakers as well. Instead of creating American style cards this Valentine’s Day, our class was given a demonstration on Madhubani art by University of Delhi, Professor Priyanka Singh. Priyanka Singh teaches Hindi, and she also researches and practices different forms of Indian regional style art, including Madhubani art.  

Madhubani art is a style of painting practiced in the Mithila region of India using a variety of methods from using fingers, twigs, and nib pens. In the artwork, one can find depictions of nature, people, and gods and goddesses, but the style is particularly recognizable because of the incredibly detailed geometric patterns used. Some of the Madhubani art has religious importance, but there are also scenes of nature or people interacting with nature. The art form started as a type of wall art, but now it is also commonly done on canvas, or in our class paper. Our class prepared for the art lesson by researching beforehand, and Kusum-ji showed us prominent examples of some award-winning Madhubani art. When Priyanka Singh joined our call, she told us about her life, showed us some examples of previous Madhubani art examples she’d done, and then led us through how to draw our own Madhubani art style मछली (machhalee) or fish through instructions in Hindi. 

In our case, Prof. Singh stressed the importance of using a small tipped pen to create the exact geometric patterns and explained variations that would be appropriate given the art style like changing the color of the border from red to yellow, and she told us the criteria that always needed to be present. She also explained different Hindi vocabulary for what we were drawing. After the demonstration, we ended up finishing our drawings at home. 

Here are some comments from the Hindi 102 class: 

Rohit said, “The drawing experience was really fun and an engaging way of introducing students to Madhubani art.”  

Yasha said, “I thought it was a great experience because we were able to apply our Hindi comprehension skills, we’ve learned so far to the task we were doing (working on the drawing) which I thought was a great, relaxing way to practice our skills.”  

Pippa said, “I really appreciated how we were able to interact with a new part of Indian culture, especially over Zoom. Priyanka Singh did a great job of clearly demonstrating what we were doing and adjusting to our level of Hindi. I didn’t know what Madhubani art was before our class, but Priyanka Singh and Kusum-ji did a great job of introducing us to the unique concepts and styles.” 

Overall, the class was very enjoyable because it combined creativity with learning Hindi and Indian culture. The really cool thing about art is that it can be adapted in so many ways, and I’m glad that Kusum-ji and Priyanka Singh were there to teach us how to adapt the art while still being respectful of the Madhubani art tradition.

This workshop was supported by Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Duke Service-learning.