01 Jul Pithora Painting and the Coming of Better Times

By Gita Wolf

What potential does art offer as healing in the time of a pandemic? As we all emerge slowly from a year filled with illness, death, and despair, we wanted to look forward to better times by recollecting a myth that’s curiously comforting. There is a belief amongst the indigenous Rathwa tribe from Gujarat that creating a particular painting—called Pithora—banishes adversity and brings about a change in fortune....