Protective Wall Art

Protective — 23 museum-grade prints that set the mood. Aipan is the ritual floor- and wall-art of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, made traditionally by Kumaoni women with white rice-paste (biswar) drawn by fingertip onto a geru — red-ochre earth — ground. Aipan chowkis are seat-diagrams drawn for life-rites: a naamkaran chowki is laid for a child's naming ceremony, with footprints and auspicious marks invoking protection and welcome into the household. Kalighat Pat grew up in 19th-century Kolkata, painted by migrant patua (chitrakar) scroll-painters who settled near the Kalighat Kali temple and sold quick watercolour souvenirs to pilgrims. Working on mill-made paper with a bold single black brush outline and soft 'boneless' shaded strokes on a plain ground, they painted gods and goddesses alongside what is often called India's first modern social satire — sharp, affectionate caricatures of the colonial 'babu' and the hypocrisies of Calcutta life. Narasimha is the man-lion avatar of Vishnu, who burst from a pillar to slay the demon Hiranyakashipu at dusk on a threshold — neither man nor beast, neither day nor night, neither inside nor out — to defeat the boon that made the demon invincible, and so to protect his devotee, the child Prahlada. Worshipped with the goddess Lakshmi as Lakshmi Narasimha, he is a major deity across Telangana and Andhra.

Updated 22 Jun 2026