Description

Tiger! Tiger!: Nisha Mathew Ghosh – ANAH-ANAH
Team Leader: Raju
Team: Suchitra and Govindamma
Creative: Soumitro Ghosh and Abhishek Dasgupta
Photographs: Abhishek Dasgupta and Soumitro Ghosh
Location: House of Stories, Bengaluru by Nisha Mathew Ghosh + Soumitro Ghosh (Mathew and Ghosh Architects)

The ANAH-ANAH project was set up as an experiment to use weaving as a tool to explore ideas of nurture, feminity, work and freedom. Often using text as a sub-narrative the work explores objects, forms, and larger scale art installation. It is a social project set up by Nisha Mathew Ghosh in the latter part of the 90’s, as a means to train, skill and create work for the dignity of the economically disadvantaged.

The current main trainer at ANAH-ANAH is Raju who was without any history of the skill of weaving. He had to formerly resort to begging in Bangalore due to his inability to fetch a job, being a little
person with physical challenges . A chance encounter at a signal light and a few years of training enabled a restoration of dignity and self worth. He translates with guidance the design and detail instructions with a small team that he supervises and trains. Suchitra and Govindamma have bothtaken to the craft and picked up skills in the last few years. Both the lovely people now add to their family incomes, manage to take care of their children, one of whom is specially abled and hence the need to have flexible timings. To make it feasible for them to be able to work, the workshop was set up within a short walking distance from their homes.

Tiger! Tiger! is art project which took 18 months for this life size tiger to take shape. “The narrative looks at empty shadows of power, the dematerialized form of a symbol of majestic power and authority, now emptied. It is both a socio-political comment as much as a reference to the dangerously merging borders of habitation and inhabitation, provoking accountability and stewardship. It references old power structures that glorified hunting for its trophies and stuffed animals. The outer sheath of the Tiger is at once both a dream like appearance as well as disappearance and must provoke many questions.” Artist. NishaMathewGhosh