• Source: Tribal Women Artists Cooperative

The Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) was initially founded by Bulu Imam (Convener, INTACH Hazaribagh Chapter) in 1993 out of a Tribal Art Project funded by the Australian High Commission, New Delhi. The cooperative continues to be directed by Bulu Imam, Padma Shri awardee (2019) as a social worker for promoting the ritual Khovar and Sohrai mural painting tradition, benefiting thousands of village women, and has gained international recognition through several exhibitions in major art galleries around the world.
This unique tribal art project was started with about 40 women artists which began to bring the art on walls of the mud houses to paper and paint professionally. Today, the cooperative's initiative empowers over 5,000 women enabling their art to be exhibited in over 60 international venues in Australia, Canada, America, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and England.
The tribal art created by these women artists over the decades has been displayed and preserved in the Sanskriti Museum & Art Gallery, and accessible for research and study to anyone interested in the development of tribal art and culture in Jharkhand. The first collection of tribal paintings made by the cooperative in early 1990s are a part of the Bulu Imam Collection, and which is made available exclusively through the cooperative.




Objectives



The raison d’être for the founding of the cooperative was to highlight the Meso-chalcolithic rock art of the region connected with the tradition of Khovar and Sohrai mural painting done by the tribal communities in Jharkhand as an economic resource. It also aimed to highlight the issues of displacement and indigenous rights threatened by opencast coal mining, and destruction of forests vital to the tribals as well as tigers and elephants using them as corridors. This art project was created to bring to the tribal women of the region a sense of strength in their identity and as a means of economic support.
The profits received through exhibitions and sale of artworks are divided into three accounts:

Welfare fund for women artists.
Employment fund through which a third of all earnings goes directly to the artist, and
Cooperative maintenance fund.




= Major collections

=
Australian Museum, Sydney
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Casula Art Centre, Casula, Sydney
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
Flinders Museum Collection, Adelaide
Dietmar Rothermund Collection, Heidelberg
Volkerkunde Museum, Heidelberg
(Late) Soli P.Godrej Collection, Bombay
Kekoo & Khorshed Gandhy collection, Bombay
Daniela Bezzi Collection, Milan
Tarshito Studio, Rome (14 - 8’x8’ feet Cloth Paintings)
Marcus Leatherdale Collection, New York
Michel Sabatier Collection, La Rochelle, France
INTACH Collection, New Delhi
Museum of Man Collection, Montreal
South Delhi Polytechnic, New Delhi
Museum Rietberg, Zurich, Switzerland
Espace de Congrès, La Rochelle, France
S.P.Godrej Collection, Bombay
Diedi Von Schawen Collection, Paris
Herve Pedriolle Collection, Paris
British Museum, London
SADACC Trust Collection, Norwich
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa




References

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Daftar karya tentang Perusahaan Hindia Timur Belanda
• Tribal Women Artists Cooperative
• Bulu Imam
• Nalini Malani
• United States Department of Agriculture
• Gondi people
• Makonde chess set
• Comanche
• Kiowa
• Tlingit
• Navjot Altaf