‘Language Beyond Words and History Beyond Text’

After completing my graduation in sculpture, when I joined the Masters course in archaeology,
everyone asked me two seemingly simple questions: “Why archaeology after sculpture? What is
the connection between the two?” When I thought about it then I really had no answer. Today,
when I look back at the same question after spending almost eight years in the field of
archaeology, I have an answer. These two subjects are nothing but two sides of the same coin
called ‘culture’.

Archaeology, in particular, is a discipline that studies culture through its material manifestations.
It provides tools to understand the past through various objects left behind by ancient
people.Although these objects are often called ‘art’ by modern people because of their decorative
motifs, their original purpose was ,to be used as ornaments or toys, as modes of transaction or for
rituals and so on. These objects tell us about the thought processes that went into creating them
and also how the ancient people interacted with their environments.For example, what we
consider as rock ‘art’ today, tells us much more than the artistic skills utilized to make the art. It
tells us about the surrounding environment, tools they used, trees, animals, the gods they
worshiped and their emotions towards these and many other things.

As a sculptor, I always feel that ‘form’ plays a vital role in our lives.It is not merely a ‘shape’ but
the expression and interaction with the environment. Archaeology allows me, to go deeper into
this interaction with the help of the ‘forms’ depicted in the art. Not only it gives a chance to
reconstruct the mundane environment but also the emotional experiences as well.

Awareness about this process appears to be missing in art education or education in general in
India. Learning art today, students are restricted only to forms and shapes. Nobody bothers to
look at the thought processes behind the creation and evolution of these forms and shapes.We
seem to have forgotten this very bond between human past and modern art forms and this has led
to fragmentation of these subjects in the educational system. Socio-cultural context to learning
art is conditioned and is too often a mere mechanical form of ritualistic repetition. This is
dumping of information into fresh young minds to repeat and follow. It has little to do with its
proclaimed aims of art education, far from bringing in the quality of life which allows for the
capacity of ‘thinking’ and ‘creating’.

Keeping this in mind, I designed an experiment for age twelve students, in order to test whether
they, when told about this link, could look at ‘pictorial forms’ with a deeper perspective. One
school, ‘Aksharnandan’ (Abode of Letters) in Pune (Maharashtra State, India) gave me an
opportunity to run this experiment with their students; it was really a fabulous experience for me
as a teacher.
The experiment was called’ Language Beyond Words and History Beyond Text'. I used
primitive art forms as a tool to show the students how ancient man began conveying his thoughts
through drawings when verbal language was probably not there. Also I wanted my students to
learn to read the thoughts of ancient people and interpret what they were trying to say through
their ‘art’work.

The experiment was divided in two sections

 Interactive lecture by me

 Activity for students.

While delivering the lecture I told the cultural process of human kind. I explained to the students
that primitive art, tribal art and modern art are nothing but links of the same chain and these
paintings talk to us in the language which is beyond words, and is universal. After this lecture I
distributed 60 paintings among the students. These paintings were the random collection of pre
historic rock art forms from different regions: African rock paintings, Egyptian rock paintings,
Spanish rock paintings and so on. Each student got 2 paintings; they were asked to look closely
at their paintings and then to write a story about what they thought the artist was trying to say. I
was curious to see whether they would be able to 'hear' the narrative of the picture and then
express that story in words.

Here are a few examples of the students’ stories. They are written in Devnagari script, which is
used to write Marathi language. Marathi is the state language of Maharashtra state in India. It
belongs to Indo-Aryan group of languages.

Vidyadhish came up with this story on his picture:

“There was a man. Whose name was Lingo. He was wandering in the jungle one day. Suddenly
he felt very hungry. He went back in his cave, and asked his wife to give something to eat. But as
there was no flesh stored in the cave, he went back in the jungle for hunt. He took his boomerang
and sphere along. While wandering in the jungle he saw two deers. He threw boomerang on one
deer, killed one deer and another ran away. He went back to the cave happily with the hunt.”

Mukta got this picture. She had two ways of interpretation for the same picture

First interpretation: “These people are going to attend some event. That is why they have
decorated themselves with tree leaves. The person is standing in the left has some musical
instrument in his hands. It is looking like a drum.”
Second interpretation: “These two people are going for the hunt. They have bows and arrows.
They are wearing leaves on their head to hide in the bushes. And because of tree leaves they are
easily camouflaged.”

Second Picture:

“These are ‘dancing people’ in the picture. All of them are facing in one direction, so I think they
are looking at the singer who is not in the picture. All the three figures don’t have left legs, so I
think all of them have lifted their left feet to dance.”

This is Neeraja’s story:

“These might be their gods or could be ghosts also. It is also possible that these are changing and
overlapping images of gods, turned into a collage.”

Kalyani says,
“There are two animal carts. Two people are sitting on each cart. One man is standing on the
ground. And he is saying ‘start’. I think it is a race between two groups.”

Rohit thinks,

“There are two different groups in the picture. One of them has hunted an animal. And another
one is fighting to get it. There seems to be almost a battle between these two groups. The group
on the right side wants to steal the hunt.”

Mihir writes,
“There are sheep grazing in the field. They are running hither and thither. There is a fox in the
middle of the flock. He has turned his tail upwards, so he is looking like he is ready in the
position to attack on sheep.”

There are 60 more pictures and 60 more stories & interpretations. It is not possible to mention all
of them here. It was really heartening and satisfying to see these children, unhindered by the
regimental and restricted ways of art learning, really going beyond the ‘shapes’. It often happens
that the spoken words or the drawn shapes come with their own baggage of prejudice. In this
case, however the students, understanding the connection between art and past, could ‘hear’ the
pictures and ‘feel’ the history! This experiment led me to newer insights of the methods of
teaching. I want to use art as an effective tool to teach the cultural processes of human life where
the students can see their own reflections and find out their own place in the history of humans.