Telling stories through art … the back story
Sandra Fiedeldy, the director of Sarangi Social Enterprise in Australia, first became aware of ‘Mithila art’ as powerful storytelling medium, at a Social Business Day event at the Hyatt Hotel in Kathmandu in 2017.
By pure chance, she came across some women in very beautiful traditional dress, selling their artwork, and after some digging, came to hear that they were from Janakpur in Southern Nepal.
What made the artwork so special, was that it was a traditionally ‘women’s only’ art form. Passed on from mothers to daughters, she discovered that Mithila has been painted on the walls of houses and temples in Nepal and India for centuries. Enmeshed in the artwork, the stories are deeply cultural, often historical and mostly mythical. The stories relate to their gods and important ceremonies like marriages, and more commonly, simple daily life activities.
As an art form with seemingly limited economic potential, fewer and fewer girls have been interested in learning this skill. More recently, local organisations like the Relative Nepal and the Janakpur Women’s Development Centre have been revitalizing the form and finding ways to create avenues of income for the artists. More recently opportunities to express women’s issues in Nepal, which is a traditionally patriarchal society, are being created.
It took some time to connect the dots, but after sharing the artwork with some friends in Australia, the idea to create inspiring and colourful shopping bags seemed like a powerful way to economically empower the women of Janakpur while at the same time preserve this valuable cultural skill.
Frankston City Council murals
As Sandra’s home city of Frankston in Melbourne has a very progressive City Council, with a strong commitment to revitalising the area with murals, it didn’t take long to create the next link. Three murals painted by local women from Melbourne’s Murals were chosen to create a local range of shopping bags that would connect Nepal with Melbourne and at the same time provide sewing work for refugees in Nepal.
The Australian Embassy mural in Kathmandu
With a budding connection to the Australian public through the Frankston City Council now in place, the next step was to approach the Australian Ambassador in Kathmandu and request that SSE work with Mithila artists from Relative Nepal in Janakpur, to create a mural on the outside wall of the Embassy. Happily, the request was accepted and after a long process, SSE received it’s first Public Diplomacy Grant through DFAT (Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs).
Working closely with the Embassy, and with the support of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program), Sarangi together with and Relative Nepal, decided that the most powerful topic for the mural would be the UN 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).
Translated into Maitili (the local language of Janakpur), Nepali and English, these goals are universal.
The next step involved brain storming with the Mithila artist to drill down what the goals meant to them. Lots of drawings were made and artworks chosen in a dynamic process that was truly life changing for everyone involved. With the help of volunteer artist Martine Valentine, the mostly enjoyable yet very challenging process of designing and painting the mural began … and took a month to complete.
