Untitled

By the time Prabhakar Barwe painted this work, the neo-tantra art movement was at its peak in India and had enveloped several artists within its fold, most of whom were forging their individual vocabulary of abstraction. The movement opened the possibility of incorporating rural India’s ritual art in their modernist vocabulary. This <i>Untitled</I> diagram is a common ritual drawing made in households for worshipping animist deities—in this case, a bird—which lie at the crossroads of mainstream Hinduism, subaltern ritualism, and intrepid experimental traditions such as tantra. Interpreting it in tantric vocabulary, the diagram sums up the essence of life, death and union with the Universal soul.