Ever since Ishan Khosla became a graduate of SVA’s MFA Design program in 2005, he’s devoted a considerable portion of his scholarship to building sturdy links between Indian arts and crafts and their relevance to the contemorary global world. He has revived the totemic folk art of văn se vănvās. He has forged recipricoal relationships between tattoo-based lettering styles and techniques, which defy decades of Eurocentric design vocabularies imposed by Western globalist imperatives, which had virtually locked out more homegrown approaches in favor of corporate type design linguistics. With renewed national inspirations arising in all artforms, it is logical that graphic design, so widespread in the Indian subcontinent, would explode on the cultural stage through experimental designers/researchers reviving ancient yet relevant arts.
Below, with Khosla’s permission, I’ve reprinted a short excerpt of his article on collaborating with the godna artists of Central India to create a typeface. For the full illustrated essay, click here.
Rites to Writing: Reimagining Baiga Tattoos as a Typeface
by Ishan Khosla
This article has been written from my perspective as a visual artist, designer and design educator, fascinated with the rich symbolism and strong graphic quality of the art of godna (tattoo) of the autochthonous peoples of India (also called, in common parlance, adivasi or tribal). I have been interacting with the godna artists of Central India for more than a decade. Much of this article is based on first-hand interviews with these communities through my travels to remote villages such as Jamgala, Puhputra and others in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh. In the Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh (MP), I visited the Gond villages of Lagmā, Gudmā, Baherakhar, Mukki, Chichrangpur, Bāhmmi and Kareli. Some villages are mixed and aiga like Bandartolā.
However, the places where I spent the most time and to which I owe much of my knowledge of the Baigā tattoo are Lalpur and Thadpatra in Dindori district in MP that I visited three times, each for about a week, in November 2022, February 2023 and April 2024. There, I spent most of my time with one of the most prominent Badnin tattooists, Mangala Bai Maravi, and her sister Jumni Bai Maravi, both daughters of the renowned tattoo artist, the late Shanti Bai Maravi. In Thadpatra and surrounding villages, I got to meet the Baiga—one of the several communities that the Badnin (as Bādi women are called) tattoo—and witnessed their godna first hand.
(Editor’s Note: More follows in the image below.)
The post The Daily Heller: A Typeface From India’s Tattoo Tradition appeared first on PRINT Magazine.