Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery

Nurturing Walls focuses on the favourite Meena theme of animals
and their young, featuring a striking collection of living art from the
walls of Meena tribal homes in Rajasthan, known as Mandana.
Mandana motifs are inseparable from everyday life as women paint
the mud walls and floors of their homes regularly, keeping time
with recurring festivals and changing seasons. Mothers teach their
daughters how to paint, and this tradtition has been passed along
generation after generation.
This teeming world of baby animals and their mothers has been
carefully recreated here as a series of silkscreen prints, on kraft paper
reminiscent of the textures of mud walls. The lives of the artists
behind this little known art is just as fascinating, and full colour
inserts capture this richness, making the form of this book as unusual
as the art it recreates.
Of appeal to artists, archaeologists and women’s studies enthusiasts,
Nurturing Walls pays tribute to the female imagination, sustained by
these everyday acts of nurturance.