Stirring the Still Air
A fan-maker outside the exhibition venue in Delhi (Express photo by Amit Mehra)
Meow Meow was his pet refrain as painter Jatin Das, grinning like a Cheshire cat, breezed through the opening of “Pankha”, an exhibition of hand fans at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) recently. The showcase brings together 500 hand fans of the 8,500 that Das procured from across the world. Over 300 of his artist friends, including A Ramachandran, Manu Parekh, Arpita Singh and Gopi Gajwani, have contributed fan-themed paintings to the showcase. Besides, women fan-makers from Jharkhand, Bihar, Jaisalmer and Uttarakhand can be seen making and selling hand fans outside the exhibition, which is divided into Southeast Asia and rest of the world.
Among the pankhas — made of jhaadu sticks, khajur leaves, bamboo, wool, colourful cloth patchwork with beads, mirror, silk, satin and lace — is one semicircle red-green-painted dry grass one, resembling the headgear of a chhau dancer and is used for Barsha Ritu and Chhath Puja, a fan-maker tells us.
Credit: indianexpress.com