davidjbrownarts

Aditi—A Celebration of Life

Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, JUN 4-JUL 28, 1985)

Exhibition Curator and Designer: Rajeev Sethi

Exhibition catalogue: In the exhibition, each stage of life is informed by the ritual designs, traditional paintings, craftwork, folk songs, dances, stories, and activities associated with it in India. Aditi also stresses the role that craftspeople, artisans, musicians, dancers, and iterant performers play in the life cycle. These stages of life were the organizing structure for the works and performances in the exhibition.
(for more info, see Aditi: The Living Arts of India, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985)

One of a handful of influential exhibitions that I participated in that greatly affected my thinking and career was the Smithsonian’s Aditi: A Celebration of Life. Through 3000 objects that spanned several centuries, the exhibition celebrated India’s long-standing marriage of art/life/craft/music. My initial thought still holds today: museums have the capacity to do much more in opening doors for their audiences. Here, stories were told through a mix of dazzling objects, alongside working artists, merging 5000 years of Indian cultural and artistic traditions.

In early 1985, I was living and working in a studio at in DC when artist Charlie Bessant and I joined forces. He invited me to work with him on a project for an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, titled Aditi---A Celebration of Life. Bessant won a contract to replicate the weathered paste-like mud coverings, applied to traditional Indian structures, that were to be used for walls, platforms, and alcoves spanning six large galleries.

In India, a thick paste is made from cow dung, dirt, and water, and when mixed, is applied by hand to wall surfaces and structures. (There was plenty of dung in DC but not the bovine kind). In photos that were provided, we could clearly see the handprints left by the people who performed this type of application, reminding me of the early handprints found in Spain’s Altamira caves some 35,000 years ago. The mud paste was durable, practical, easily obtainable, and weatherproof. Bessant, in his bid proposal to the Smithsonian, suggested a mixture of a pure powder pigment, sand, water, and a fire-proof paint that when mixed in the right proportions, was applied first by trowel, then by hand, on hundred and sixty, 2-inch thick, 4 x 8 ft, Ethafoam panels, covered on one side with insect screen, to hold the material. We spend 2-3 months preparing the panels before transporting them to the museum, installing each on bare stud walls and covering parts of wooden platforms. All the seams were then sealed with the mud, and delightfully so, much of it became a canvas for a handful of Indian artists in residence. The prep was just the start of this inspirational adventure.

Our effort served as stage-setting for all that was Aditi. Years in the making; hundreds (if not more) of individuals involved, complex, logistic nightmares, incredible international and political cooperation, expensive, groundbreaking, earth shattering Indian rural and ritual based arts and crafts found their way into the galleries of the museum and into the hearts of the visitors. There were some three thousand objects that spanned several centuries.

Visitors felt this ‘celebration of life’ firsthand. When you entered the galleries (and I visited often) you could rub shoulders with the artists painting intricate designs directly on the walls; watch others bring 5 ft tall terracotta horses to life; or find an acrobat walk across a stretched zipline above your head—all happening, sometimes simultaneously. My favorite was an old chap who sat cross-legged in a corner, juggling three machetes while ‘threading’ tiny beads on a string that dangled from his mouth, on small droplets of spittle.