By V. Geetha
In an era of exploding digital alternatives to the schoolroom, it is perhaps good to remember that learning is not only about ideas and information, which digital sources supply in abundance. It has also to do with spontaneity, with the unexpected and the serendipitous....
By V. Geetha
For over twenty years now, we have curated exhibitions to do with our books and publishing. Some of these have focused on individual titles, others on our book-making, and yet others on broad themes that define our intertwined publishing concerns — to do with content, form and printing. As we worked on Painting Everything in the World, we pondered over these other exhibitions. What, we asked ourselves, is the relationship between curation and publishing?...
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....
By V. Geetha and Sanjana Vamadevan
Our linocut-illustrated, letterpressed classic Little Girls Are Wiser Than Men was released in February of 2021. Adapted from a poetic short story by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, this astute tale about conflict and resolution has been illustrated by the Lebanese artist and lithographer Hassan Zahreddine....
By V. Geetha
Of the many titles that we have published over this quarter century, books featuring tribal and folk art outnumber all others. The artists that we have worked with come from different traditions, spread across the country, but there are almost none from southern India. Seeing Ramu Velar at work, we realised that this part of India might not have living traditions of art, but there were artisanal traditions that could furnish visual content for illustrated books. ...
By Maguma
Spanish artist Maguma reinterprets a classic tale of greed and need, by the Grimm brothers, for contemporary readers. The story opens out into two parallel visual narratives — one set in times past and the other rooted in a dystopian present. As possessions and fortunes are rapidly exchanged, who wins and who loses? And what exactly does winning and losing entail?...
By Maguma
God of Money was made possible by a series of happy circumstances. In 2014, during the celebration of the International Illustration Festival, Ilustratour, I met Gita Wolf, director of Tara Books. My work appeared very witty to her and we had an interesting conversation thereafter....
