VIL-S-BOLL: February 2024

Reawakening Paper in India

The exhibition ONPAPEROFPAPER was curated by the architect and sculptor of paper folds Ankon Mitra and Apparao Gallery on occasion of INDIA ID – art – design – architecture, February 15 – 18, 2024 at NSIC Grounds, Okhla, Delhi.

75 exhibitors mainly from India showed their work with paper in a C-shaped space surrounding the inner symposium hall at the venue. One half of the C - shape was dedicated to white works, the other half to colored work.

To understand the selection of work it is necessary to investigate Ankon Mitra’s own work and his passion.

Ankon Mitra is the director of “The Folded Universe” and has taken up the old traditional Japanese technique of origami (ori meaning folding and kami meaning paper) which originated in 17^th century in Japan and taken it to new heights. He has named his branch Oritecture. Many architects start sketching their ideas on tracing paper and build their models in paper, but Ankon’s ideas begin by folding and shaping paper, dealing with three dimensionality and mathematics. He is obsessed with the fold. His models mainly turn out in paper but can also be produced in metal or other material. After Ankon has created his models, his studio staff will help produce often very large constructions.

Ankon is passionate about paper in all its forms and has taken on a tremendous amount of work to organize OnPaperOfPaper in collaboration with Apparao Gallery and his staff. It is admirable to contribute to the reawakening of paper in India, which is needed. One of his aims is to make an Indian Paper Triennale. Several countries in the world have since 1986 set up one Paper Biennale after the other, so why not india?

When the need for something begins to vane, a society invests the material itself with cultural value. The use we formerly made of paper changes, and we focus on paper as a medium – a medium for artistic expression.

The group of exhibitors, designers, architects and artists, Ankon had invited were mainly from India, which gave a good opportunity to observe how far the direction of expression in paper has moved in India in relation to the tremendous amount of possibilities cellulose has to offer. We were a handful from Europe and the USA.

In the exhibition only approximately 10 out of 75 showed work made with handmade paper. The rest of the participants were using industrial produced paper or mould made paper, recycled paper, cardboard, or honeycomb. Many works were diverse paper cuts, and origami, some stitched paper, rolled paper, or cut ups in white or colored industrial paper. Some work was made of paper maché, crepe paper, others were made with paper crochet, paper knitting, paper twine, macramé or found paper It gave an overall variety of available paper, one can buy, but I missed to see the many technical possibilities handmade paper can offer. Handmade paper can express a soul in an artwork and the real fundamental knowledge of what kind of paper material one uses was not present in many of the works, although there was an incredible amount of work. It somehow floated together in and out of the brownish box like display. The bombardment had its impact as an overwhelming symphony of a need to express in any paper most often in an architectural or design direction, very often with an underline of craft more than art. Unfortunately, the lightning was not good enough, which must be excused. It was not an easy task to display so much work within the space and to adjust light depending on a wood beam construction, covered with jute cloth.

Handmade paper.

Handmade paper is defined by dipping a mould with deckle into a vat with fiber and water and lifting the mould, so the water can drain. In a handmade paper the fiber is intertwined within the paper space, which makes the handmade paper strong. Its capacities depend on beating time, water quality and the fiber which has been used. Handmade paper can be made very thin and take on an immense variety. Pulp can be obtained from all plant cells. Cellulose must be extracted from the plants: non wood pulp from linen, flax seed, kozo, gampi, mitsumata, lokta bark, bamboo, wheat or rice straw, jute, esparto grass, elephant grass, sunn hemp, kenaf, nettle – the possibilities are endless. Textile rags can be used, which is most often the case in India and of course recycled paper, which is not always sustainable. The floating pulp can of course be used as well and cast on plaster or other material to obtain the final expression.

A characteristic feature of handmade paper as a material is that it has aspects belonging to history, geography, biology, ecology, cultural history and aesthetics. It is a material meeting most of the requirements that artists may have for a material for graphics, painting, sculpture, photo, installation, interior/exterior design/architecture, fashion, furniture, lighting, books, music, and performance. Work expressed in and with handmade paper has a clear and definable style.

So how come most part of the exhibitors is not experimenting with handmade paper? After talking with many of them, I realized that many do not have an insight into the history of paper nor the Indian paper history or the variety of possible materials and techniques that papermaking has to offer.

Each country has a history of paper which often reflects the history of the country. So let us look shortly on India’s paper history.

In India textile ranks the highest within the arts and crafts, paper ranks the lowest. There is no respect for paper and no knowledge about the handmade paper process. Paper is sold with the label “handmade paper” even though it is not. One of the exhibitors told me she had bought and used handmade hemp paper even though it was clearly mould made. Mould made paper simulates handmade paper. The mould is not held by the hands but replaced by a rotating cylinder, which picks up the paper pulp from the vat in a mechanized process. The paper has a length, which the stronger handmade paper does not have.

Paper is not just paper but has to do with cultural history and aesthetics.

The art of creating handmade paper in India has a “wounded” history. The more than 2000 -year-old craft, invented in China, travelled via Korea and Japan towards the West. It took 1000 years before it reached Europe and more than 1000 years to reach India. Some claims that paper could have been invented in India in 250 B.C. (Chauhan and Meena). The general opinion is that handmade paper was introduced to Northern India in the 13^th century by Arab merchants.

Before The Mughal Empire, 1526 – 1857, paper can only have been used by very few for religious purpose in the very Northern part of India. Coming from Central Asia the Mughal emperor Babur brought his craftsmen to document mainly his life at the imperial court in writing and miniature painting. He brought Kagzi families, who could produce handmade paper from hemp and jute. It is interesting to compare the handmade paper history during the Renaissance in Europe 14^th – 17^th century to the history of handmade paper during the Mughal Empire. Never has more beautiful and long-lasting handmade paper been produced. Mughals played a great role in the flourishing of the Indu – Islamic civilization and were patrons of art, culture, architecture and literature.

With The British Empire – British Raj, 1858 – 1947, the Kagzi families began suffering as the British forced India to give preferential treatment to foreign goods: industrial English paper. The Kagzi families struggled to survive.

Gandhi, 1869 – 1948, urged the Indian population to spin their own cotton, a movement named Khadi (derived from Khaddar”, a term used for handspun Indian fabric), part of his Swadeshi movement, established for social and economic reasons, as a protest of British goods. Gandhi is often seen on posters and photos sitting in front of his spinning wheel, spinning his own cotton. Implied in the movement is that everybody can spin and weave their own cloth, and everybody can make handmade cotton paper out of rags! This further put pressure on the Kagzi families, who for many generations had been trained in the old craft. Implied is also a lack of respect for tradition, skill, and generations’ knowledge about the art of papermaking.

The above historical periods ruined the former beautiful handmade paper quality; the art deteriorated and handmade Indian paper turned into a production of cotton rag paper, waste material from textile units which in the 21st century often is mixed with synthetic fibers that create knots in the final handmade sheet.

When I asked some of the exhibitors why they do not use handmade paper, their reply was: it is too thick and not flexible enough. This answer expresses a lack of knowledge of how fibers can be produced. It has to do with fiber material, water quality and beating time. (Beating time takes place in a stamper or a Hollaender beater). With that knowledge very strong and very thin paper can be created – paper with a soul and expression that cannot be replaced by industrial paper. Very few exhibitors had made their own paper and few their own pulp.

Has the old art of papermaking survived in India? There are very few places where the traditional method is in use. In Sanganer, the Hussain family still uses the old method. In Kolkata Anupam Chakraborty makes very fine handmade paper of plants and teaches as well, In Bangalore Blue Cat produces mainly mould made paper. In Pune there are few places, but they do not make paper as before. In the small village Kagzipura in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, they made handmade paper of cotton rags. INTACH - National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage has held workshop here to train artisans and revive the craft.In Ahmedabad Kalamkhush Handmade Centre is about to be moved to another location, and in Udaipur their are two papermills producing mould made paper of cotton rags. Few artists hear and there are taking up the old craft and experiment with plants for example at bhasha.centre - Adivasi Academy. So, there is a handful, which is not much in such a large country. And often paper producers claim that they make handmade paper, which they do not.

A panel discussion took place during the venue to focus on an eventual Paper Triennale in India. In this context I find it is important to define what one means when talking about paper. How does one classify paper?

The very first paper biennale took place in Düren, Germany, at the Leopold Hoesch Museum in 1986. The focus was on how handmade paper could be used as an artistic means of expression. Then after a while this original beginning began to spread into paper biennales in many more countries All kinds of paper of industrial produced thin white or colored synthetic paper sheets, made of synthetic resin, made to have properties like paper and a multitude of many other qualities of paper appeared. The Italian Lucca biennale is sponsored by the carboard industry, so the biennale shows an enormous number of cardboard sculptures on every corner of the streets.

We live in the 21^st century where we are all threatened by climate change. We must think about sustainability and bio production. In this context handmade paper is a good choice Further it speaks to our 5 senses: handmade paper has a sound, it can be eaten (think about John Cage’s Edible Papers), plant paper has a smell of nature, it has tactility and visually it attracts the eye.

Artists working with handmade paper are experimenting with numerous plant fibres and have always for the most parts worked sustainable and pointed towards the many possibilities of paper. Parallel with the growth of technology and globality a plant/paper research and innovation have and are taken place on all possible levels. The biodegradable mushroom mycelium has been taken up by designers and architects to make new products.

Scientists have experimented with seaweed as insulation material and plan to make the seaweed insulating material in sheet form. Now "balls of the Neptune" are gathered manually on the coast of the Mediterranean and are imported to Germany from Tunisia and Albania. The insulating material from seaweed under the name NeptuTherm is offered today on the market by the German company of the same name.

On the internet one can find numerous models how to build NASA spacecraft models in paper inspired by paper cutting and Nasa seeking novel folding/origami-based patterns and concepts for packaging a large radiation shield within a single launch vehicle that can be deployed around a Mars vehicle in cis-Lunar space. This challenge seeks creative ideas that can be shown using diagrams, graphics, 3D models, or animations that at a minimum show the stowed and deployed configurations.

Within the paper art the future goes hand in hand with technology, 3d paper printing, computational origami, innovative and renewable materials, that all offer opportunities for increased use of paper, and other cause changes in demand for different grades of paper.

The traditional Chinese and Japanese technique of paper-cutting, the art of cutting unique designs in paper, may be the key to the development of lightweight, super portable, and sustainable power sources for devices including remote controls, watches, and temperature sensors.

An Indian Paper Triennale?

It is important to learn from the past if one wants to look far ahead. We create our work now, but also for the future, we do not know. To create it is important to know one’s material in depth. Paper is not just a surface, it contains nature: plants contain cellulose. Nature is the force responsible for the appearance and transformation of any object or idea that will ever exist.

An interesting aspect could be that India could lead the way for showing innovations in paper. Creating a Triennale that specifies what paper truly is in its inner core. It is important to make references to India’ s history of paper and the original historical way of making paper. Only in this way can paper obtain respect as an art form in India.

Some of the latest innovations of paper are Nanotechnology, Biodegradable Paper, Sustainable Manufacturing, Micro-Fibrillated Cellulose (MFC) 3D Paper Printing, which could be shown parallel with the use of methods of the past.

The initiative by Ankon Mitra is admirable. With OnPaperOfPaper he made sure that paper came in focus in Delhi and the observers were excited. He raised awareness of an almost lost art form. For a future Paper Triennale support is needed. All the exhibitors supported with their work and many by their presence and the social interaction between the participants were important and inspiring for many. But support must also come from foundations.

In 2022-23 I curated the exhibition Paper – A Cross-Cultural Voice with 7 Indian selected artists and 6 from Europe and USA. The focus was on handmade paper as an artistic means of expression. The exhibition was supported by Danish Foundations and shown at The ArtCenter Silkeborg Bad, Denmark, from Oct. 1, 2022 – Jan.8, 2023 and at the Kasthurbhai Lalbai Museum in Ahmedabad from Feb.18. – March 18. 2023. The most important in curating this exhibition was to raise awareness of handmade paper as an artform especially in India. Out of the 7 Indian invited artists 5 were also exhibiting at the OnPaperOfPaper exhibition. So small seeds have been planted for yet many more exhibitions to come in India with focus on paper.

Anne Vilsboell

Litterature on Indian Papermaking:

One of the exhibitors: Neeta Premchand: OFF THE DECKLE EDGE, A PAPERMAKING JOURNEY THROUGH INDIA - 1995

http://annevilsboll.blogspot.com : check also Kagzi article from 2014

A Cavalcade of few of the exhibited works: