Engage-wl-3419-Erasure, Revival, and Commodification of Mithila Art

The revival of Mithila art has a curious history. It was mainly due to the work of colonial art historians that the artistic style drew the attention of the world. However, the historiography of the Madhubani tradition is riddled with problems. In the first place, there occurred a homogenization of the unique artistic traditions within the ‘Madhubani’ in which the distinctive traditions were subsumed by the generic nomenclature. This studyanalyses the revival of traditional Mithila artthrough the homogenizationof folk traditions into Madhubani Art and interrogates how the revival coupled with commodification led to the erasure of the identity ofMithila art.