RE IMAGINING THE PRIMITIVE

‘Primitivism’ was an art movement in the early 1980’s, during which many artists turned to primitive art for inspiration. It was probably a time when too much meaning was being sought from interpretations of abstractions in art.

The idea of the primitive has never been obsolete. Today, technology has enabled an idea or a line of thought, endemic to a certain region, spread like a forest fire across the waters, all over the world, such that its origins are untraceable. However, development of technology over the millennia, not only has diluted such identity.

To arrest this fear and retrieve the cultural run off, design and art will have to find emancipation ; in the use of hands and return to the act of making, for its own sake. The present day design and art is consumed by an overwhelming fear of the end of the world and a compelling urgency of purpose. 

Imbibing this sensibility from the primitive, unrefined, unpretentious and raw; will alone rescue us from the clasps of ennui and our zealous morality.