By Gita Wolf

The connection of skill and labour to art making has always interested us. We’re curious not only about the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of traditional art, but equally in its connection to artisanal practices, the craft that goes into giving it a physical form. In the case of Mata-Ni-Pachedi, this involves painting, block-printing and dyeing techniques which are painstaking, requiring skill and experience. This kind of artisanal knowledge is profound and priceless, but it is not valued highly, and seen more as a sequence of repetitive tasks learned through apprenticeship. Instead of holding artisanal practices against the mirror of industrial manufacture — or seeing them as distinct from art-making — we’d like to connect them intrinsically to the creative process....

By Gita Wolf and Catriona Maciver

It was a sensory experience, to say the least, to rummage through dusty drawers full of metal and wooden type faces in all shapes and sizes. Sadly, most of the sets were incomplete – since Tara had bought the press second hand, and the type was thrown in – so we found ourselves hunting down characters to form words, as though we were putting together a puzzle....

By Arun Wolf

What is remarkable to me about many Tara projects is the spirit of collaboration that lies behind them. I think this commitment to genuine dialogue finds a way of seeping through into the pages of the books, but it’s perhaps not always obviously tangible....

By Gita Wolf

We’re proud and gratified to finally present the world with a project that is especially close to our feminist hearts. Several years in the making, the story of how this amazing book came to be is worth telling, at length....