Two weeks ago we spent a day with Monimala and Jakub, two Patachitra artists that are currently visiting the UK to promote their art. They are visiting the UK as part of a programme to promote Indian folk-art that is organised byBanglanatak.com.
We have been looking forward to this meeting, as we haven't been in touch with the Patachitra since we left India in April. We did feel apprehensive about communicating with Monimala and Jakub as we don’t speak Bengali and they speak very little English. Considering our translator was only able to stay for an hour we did surprisingly well! With a lot of pointing and drawing in the air...
We were of course limited in our ability to share our thoughts, and we were not able to ask all the questions we intended to. Sometimes we would say, "ok, ok...” yet feeling that something was left unclear or perhaps feeling we were being misunderstood.
That day we visited various contemporary art galleries in London. When we visited the Patua in India, they had presented their work and the works that had inspired them. Now we wanted to show a little bit of our life and what inspired our work. We visited art galleries that showed different approaches to making and presenting art in London and took them to places that show how we live and where we come from.
That evening we watched "Premise - ..." at Niels's house and after dinner Monimala sang Bengali songs. Unfortunately, we couldn't think of any songs to sing in return. Is our culture less expressive?
A day like this really makes me think about how momentary meetings like these are and how much we could all learn from them. We’re dressed in a different way, wer’e born and raised in a different culture, most of the things we’re used to are different, and yet, yesterday we kept saying: "I know what you mean", "I understand"... There was some sort of acceptance, kindness towards our differences. Those differences became reasons to talk, to compare our day-to-day realities, to exchange various points of view.
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