Tree Matters

The Bhil people of Central India are amongst the country’s oldest indigenous communities. To them, the natural world is not ‘a thing apart’, but exists in a seamless relationship to their home and the everyday. Gangu Bai, Bhil artist, explores this relationship through her memories and paintings of food, work, festivals, illness, medicine… Her tales centre round trees, and so each of her memories has a tree as its focus. Illustrated in vivid and cheerful colours, the paintings in this book foreground a universe of brightly coloured dots, lines and shapes that encompasses all living beings, big and small and wise and wonderful.