Tara Books is a small socially conscious press based in the Indian city of Chennai that specializes in handmade art books. Recently I got my hands one of Tara’s Nuturing Walls: Animal Art by Meena Woman. The Meenas are the largest and one of the oldest tribal groups in the state of Rajasthan. Although the state borders Pakistan to the west, the Meena live in the eastern hills, where men farm and among other duties, women decorate interior and exterior walls and floors with intricately painted animals and symbols.

 Beyond sheer aesthetic appeal, I was attracted to these Meena murals because they are spontaneous public art, created without grants or explicit permissions. In a sense these murals are the street art of the Meena community. But unlike street art, these works are culturally expected and valued. Their content deals with the day-to-day of their lives as agricultural people—namely, raising animals and caring for young.

“There is something very moving about the way these humble women are moved to be creative in a lived, everyday sense,” writes Gita Wolf in Nuturing Walls. Which reminds me of the distinction between art and the daily grind in much of American culture, and how street art seeks to breach this gulf, as Gaia pointed out in our conversation a few months ago: “There’s a real clear distinction between what art is and what life is. Art generally occupies a rarified space. Art is something you relegate a certain amount of time in your day to sort of view and perceive…That distinction is what defines street art in the sense that, it does occupy the space of the everyday. It becomes closer to people’s regular interactions.” Als like street artists: “The artists [Meena women] know that the images will not last, and that everyday use and wind and weather will fade away the most beautiful and laborious work. Yet the outpourings continue, and it is like an awareness of a full life in the face of mortality.”  For street artists, maybe it’s more appropriate to replace “mortality” with status-quo, pre-packaged Western existence—our own particular, subsidized form of zombification.

These murals empower the Meena women. In the same vein as street art, they allow both the artists and others to more completely engage in their environment—“Madana art guides people through public space,” Gita writes. But the objective behind the Meena women’s work is community enrichment rather than personal glorification—often they collaborate on a single mural, and no one ever signs her work. Whether or not it fuels their effort, western street artists are aware of the monetary value that could be potentially assigned to their work. Meena women work without this burden/inspiration. “It’s good to remember that the work is made for an audience, not a market. The audience is the community…” Nuturing Walls tells us.

 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. If you’re interested, you can get this book at Amazon.com or order it direct from Tara.

All images courtesy of Tara Books.