News from the Indian subcontinent

A new publication from one of the RMAPpers, is on its way. See the  moving-pictures-flyer.pdf.

The book is on one aspect of the livelihood and culture of urban Bangladesh - a subaltern artform that nourishes millions of urban residents of the country and draws its energy from the uniquely ‘Bengali’ tradition of artisan life. Embedded in the distinctively rural culture of Bangladesh, the art also reflects a little known aspect of poor people’s arts as they mutate in the urban context and finds new spaces of expression.  

Apparently, the book might not seem relevant to either ‘resources’ or their ‘management’ in conventional interpretations of the terms. However, in showing how the poor find a way to imagine and create a new city, reconstruct an alternative explanation of the contemporary urban cultural landscape, and in the process destabilise the domination of the more powerful classes, the book presents a view of ordinary lives that is a must read for the anthropologists of RMAP.

Let me explain further. Rickshaw art asks the question - what kind of city do we want to live in? The rickshaws decorate the urban environment of Dhaka, make it beautiful, and give us a glimpse of what the city should or could look like. In my view, through their painting, the rickshaw artists make a place for themselves in the rapidly changing and modernising city that wants to leave behind every trace of and connection to its past. The rickshaws and their artists make a claim to their right to the urban centre by offering their art as a valuable and necessary part of its social and cultural life.

Rickshaw art represents a powerful desire of the artists to speak to the elites and others in new terms and from different perspectives. It is at once a dialogue and a critique of formal art that is practiced in galleries and studios. Its practice in everyday public spaces reinforce and subtly revise the mental maps of city-dwellers, and make rickshaw art a transparent one that in turn helps to make the city legible and relatively familiar.