Cultural Construction: Design Aesthetics, Semiotics and Semantics Associated with Masks in Namghar—The Study of Its Design Aspects in the Island of Majuli, India

Abstract

This paper concerns the application of visual ethnographic research within a field study and the ways in which it was developed and applied as to a range of visual documentation method settings, for an illustrated applied art intervention purposes. Majuli Island located in the banks of Brahmaputra River is the home to Social-cultural institutions, Satras. These Satras are in turn origins of novel craft making practices that are often utilized in cultural performances that occur in these social-cultural institutions. One such practice that is widely known is making of mask. Visual method processes have been used as an adjunct means to record oral, images and kinetic energy data as representations of characters, individuals, and groups of mask making culture. This Visual Ethnographic research generates an artistic interaction between visual designers and mask making artisans in the Island of Majuli India, in-and-out studio process. Its insights bridge the physical experience through free hand drawing to a digital output—in a graphical form. This visual ethnographic research aimed exploring and reflecting cultural phenomena in artistic method, but behind the scene, this paper seeks to arouse the issue of cultural loss of masks and intellectual potential in mask making tradition of these artisans who live in an Island separated from the world.

It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, returning again to perfect calm when the fight was over.

−Kaoru Kurimoto (1953–2009), The Leopard Mask.