Nurturing Walls

"The book itself a work of art. Each copy has brown craft-paper pages actually silk-screened with Meena designs. Instead of merely presenting photographs, Nuturing Walls offers the work itself, with the thick brown paper acting as the clay walls of the Meena homes."—Juxtapoz Magazine

This is a collection of public art—known as Mandana—from the walls of Meena tribal homes in Rajasthan. It focuses on a favorite theme of the female artists: animals and their young. Women teach their daughters to paint the mud walls of their homes, keeping time to festivals and changing seasons.

The teeming world of baby animals and their mothers has been re-created here in silkscreen prints on kraft paper reminiscent of the textures of mud walls. Full-color photographs capture the richness of the artists’ lives, making the form of this book as unusual as the art it re-creates.