Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? and Other Questions of Value, Meaning and Identity in the Circulation of Janakpur Art

In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at a ‘women’s development project’ seeking to empower its participants. And yet, the project’s very successes threaten to displace the producers (and what they produce) from their perceived qualities/identities as ‘traditional’ and ‘primitive,’ thereby bringing into question the authenticity of the ‘art’ they produce. The conundrum begs this question: can developing women produce primitive art?

The Atlantic and Everything After

As a reader, I am drawn to pieces that flirt with the boundaries between prose and poetry and I believe these preferences are evidenced in my own work, which not only encompasses creative nonfiction and poetry, but which also teases its way along the line separating the two. In The Atlantic and Everything After, I have worked with both prose poetry and the lyric essay, two styles that combine and highlight the different strengths of creative nonfiction and poetry.I created this work to explore the transformation I embarked upon when I first boarded that plane to Nova Scotia in August 2009. I created it to pay homage to the people and places that have moved or changed me. I created it to acknowledge the many similarities of travel and writing, both of which are often ugly, uncomfortable, a bit frightening, and terribly frustrating.In the process of its creation, I was forced to confront painful and delightful memories, to realize the significance of those memories within my own heart. I exercised the modes of poetry and nonfiction (and a few in between) in order to bring the many complicated aspects of travel together in a way that does its discomfort and enchantment equal justice. I have filled the pages of The Atlantic and Everything After with my poems and my prose, my own life-cherishing force. I am pleased to welcome you to it.