Mukha Shilpa - Mask making of Majuli Island

Overview

BACKGROUND
Majuli district (27.0016° N, 94.2243° E) is a river island in Assam, surrounded by the river Brahmaputra. The island is a beautiful landscape of nature with land and aquatic flora and fauna, inhibited by different tribal and non tribal communities. The river island was influenced by the then Vaishnavait movement of Assam with the establishment of a satra at Dhuwahat by the saint Shankardeva.The art of Mask making has been an exquisite culture of Majuli satras. Masks are designed to bring out the character being enacted in bhaonas and raas utsavs at Majuli. Masks accentuate different features of the characters which is otherwise difficult to portray.

PRODUCT DETAILS
I had the pleasure of working with Dr Hemchandra Goswmi where I learned and documented the process of mask making, now published on D’source India .

Detailed Article and Links

You can read about the detailed article here.

FIN.