Promoting Peace and Prosperity Through Madhubani Art – India
Madhubani, Bihar is famous for its fertile land, poor economic conditions style of painting has survived these years of negligence because the artistic skills are traditionally passed down from mothers to daughters but in a rural patriarchal society, it is hard for these women to expand or commercialize Madhubani art. The 1960s drought forced the area to look into alternative income sources and the commercialization of Madhubani art started. But how much percentage of the profit goes to the artist?
The Madhubani village womenfolk congregate in the afternoons after finishing up their household chores to work on their paintings. Their art work is collected by private and government agents who sell it to established emporiums and gift stores. These artworks generally sell from $20 to $400 per painting but these artists receive less than $1. There is a lack of enthusiasm and efforts made by the salesmen to boost the sales as the nonprofit, welfare nature of this program doesn’t give them any chance to make extra money on sales commission. There are two identifiable needs here – to empower these female artists by getting them increasingly engaged in the market transactions and to improve the sales of artwork by better advertising and marketing.
The project proposal was submitted as an alternate entry from Whitman College to Davis Projects for Peace for 2012 projects.