The Colors Drained Out of Lives of Migrants
On March 24, amidst the Corona crisis, India suddenly found itself facing an internal migrant crisis. As the government announced a nationwide lockdown, lakhs of daily-wage migrant workers found themselves jobless, left without a source of income and unprepared. With public transport suspended and little chance of survival without work, many decided to walk back home. A few walked hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers. Some walked alone, some with their children on their backs, some were pregnant, and some carried with their entire lives in a rucksack. Many never made it.
These are the people who help run the metropolises. They are the backbone of the economy. And yet, the metropolises turned their backs on them.
It’s a story of desperation, resolve, and community. There have been relief efforts, help, and happy endings. But not nearly enough. Of all the things that the pandemic harmed, the people who built our country were hit the hardest.
My paintings of these migrants depict how the very places that gave them a living are now a prison. Each person wanted to run back home as though they were imprisoned by their realities.
The title depicts that how the colors were drained out of them while everything surrounding them was still colorful. The black and white depiction of the migrants symbolizes them as prisoners of helplessness, desperation, and despair.
May 2020
Material: Handmade Paper
Color: Multicolored
Size: 11” x 11”
Medium: Watercolor and Ink
Style: Gond Art
Shilpa Mridul is a painter, garment designer, an interior designer, and theatre artist. She revives traditional and vernacular designs by weaving ethnicity into modern clothes. Through this endeavor, she has employed numerous traditional craftspeople.
Shilpa was the president of the Inner Wheel Club of Jodhpur and has worked on several social projects to empower underprivileged communities by training them to build their own solar lamps. She is also an ambassador of green architecture and has initiated projects for the revival and cleaning of centuries-old stepwells in India. While dabbling in different art and design disciplines, she used to paint as a hobby.
During the lockdown, however, she was deeply moved by everything she saw around her. In her paintings, she expresses her angst, her hope, and her vision of how the world should be. While working with craftswomen, she became interested in folk art, using traditional patterns and organic colors. Through her paintings, she has emerged as an immaculate storyteller, amalgamating traditional Indian art forms with modern day-to-day life. Her style is distinctive, elegant, and socially relevant.