Memory and Memorialising in Graphic Life Narratives- The London Jungle Book (2004) and Drawing from the City (2012)

Abstract

The paper focusses on graphic narratives -The London Jungle Book (2004)by Bhajju Shyam and Drawing from the City(2012) by Teju Behan, produced by Tara Books, an artists’ collective and publisher of graphic literature, based in Chennai, India, which lie at the threshold between adult picturebooks and artists’ books. These worksemphasise the embodied landscape and the performative art traditions of the Pardhan-Gond and Jogi art traditions respectively. The transformation of the personal through the collective art practice and memorialisation of the collective practice through the personal experience enables the artists to articulate a different kind of cultural politics, that questions the conventional frameworks of reception of non-elite vernacular and popular art forms in the contemporary art world. The paper employs the concept of “autographics” as proposed by Gillian Whitlock and Anna Poletti, which suggests a form of engagement with the modes and materiality of representation, the techniques of production, the colours, styles and textures in the art form as necessary means of signification of the self in graphic life writings.  The paper attempts to show how these graphic works resist reading and translation into a single medium and instead divert our attention towards the sensorial experience of engaging with graphic life narratives.