Animania: How to fall in love with a grey mongoose
"We are trying to take all these characters and improve their brand image in your mind through picturization," says Divya Thakur.Do India's endangered animals need to improve their image? Divya Thakur of graphic arts studio Design Temple insists they do and is happy to offer her own advertising expertise for the cause.
Thakur has dreamt up "Animania," a graphic arts show that seeks to modernize the representation of 12 of India's sacred -- and endangered -- species.
The Asiatic lion, Bengal tiger, Indian grey mongoose, eastern imperial eagle and other owls, crocodiles, parrots and peacocks will be treated to the designer's touch, in the name of protection and conservation.
Opening at Gallery BMB November 24-28, the show is a collaboration of artists from Mumbai, Argentina, Japan, Sweden and the United States, who use a new visual language to speak of animals venerated in Indian mythology as deities and vahans (vehicles).
Sacred and preservation
"This is more than just a frivolous design exercise. The hope is that better representation of animals will help conservation efforts," Thakur says. "When something is sacred to you then you automatically can't go and kill it -- it's actually a fantastic way of preservation."
While this seems to make sense in theory, it is rarely visible in practice -- the widely prevalent worship of Ganesh in Mumbai, manifested by a near ubiquity of the elephant God's statuettes and stickers, has done little to improve the lot of real elephants living in the city's suburbs, for example.
One of the reasons for this, argues Thakur, is that there is a gulf between the traditional representation of the animal Gods and the contemporary aesthetic context in which they are viewed.
"The problem with traditional is that tradition is heavy. How many youngsters really understand mythology? It's very few, and the reason for this is that there's a lack of emotional desire to connect."
Rebuilding an emotional connect
"We're coming out with a planner, for example, which helps you plan your life in the every day. All the 12 works we've done are in there and people will be living with it in an everyday, ordinary way. We think people will accept it into their lives because it's not traditional or heavy in anyway," says Thakur.
You could buy a tiger print rug, for example. "You don't need to have the real tiger skin if you have a beautiful rug instead," explains Thakur. Other products include educational material, like alphabetic flash cards, printed with animal images. Ten percent of the profits of these products go to charities dedicated to animal care.
Power of design
"There are many ways of doing this but our skill is in graphic design -- this is our area of strength and we are using the strength to raise awareness. We have chosen not to show the harsh reality, but build affinity."
Photography, she feels, has its limitations. "If I were to take a beautiful photograph of a tiger, what are the chances that I'll put that up in my living room and live with it in my everyday life? If I show the brutality of how they are killed it makes me uncomfortable."
The solution to this, in Thakur's mind, is stylish design.
"What we are doing is bringing animals back into our everyday life in an attractive, endearing way -- in a way that makes us want to live with them." She adds, "We are trying to take all these characters and improve their brand image in your mind through picturization that you don't mind having on your wall, because its pleasant. The strategy is to build attraction to something, and then you highlight what the reality of it is."
Till November 24-28 at Gallery BMB, Queens Mansion, GT Marg, Fort, tel. +91 (0) 22 2200 0061; www.gallerybmb.com; 11 a.m.-7 p.m., open Sunday.
