SUMMER EXHIBITION
THE SACRED TREES OF INDIA
DOMAINE DE BOISBUCHET
Photographs by Deidi von Schaewen, Paris, with installations by Design Village, New Delhi
Deidi von Schaewen is a Paris-based photographer and filmmaker who usually works for several years on series of motifs from which she develops “unexpected typologies that reveal the unlimited creativity of mankind “*. Many of these series have been and are still being made in India, a country she has been travelling through for over thirty years, fascinated by everyday life in the countryside and the cities: huts in the slums of Bombay, murals of the women of Hazaribagh, interiors of noble houses and, above all, places of worship dedicated to the gods of nature: sacred groves and trees.
The sacred trees of India are widespread in the subcontinent and belong to different cultures and religions, especially Hinduism, Buddhism and the animistic conceptions of the indigenous peoples, each of which attributes its own significance to them. The sites are found in the most diverse locations, but as they have hardly been explored or even mapped, they are difficult to find for those who seek them.
The photographer’s archive now includes almost 1000 photographs of trees that bear witness to a folk art that is still alive and highly imaginative. They are portraits of situations in which place and cult as well as man and plant form an intimate bond: veritable artistic installations or environments born of the collective creative process of believers with the tree, of rituals with colourful decorations and devotional objects and, last but not least, of the plastic expressiveness of the trees themselves.
European cultures are also familiar with the ritual decoration of trees, such as the Christmas tree or the May tree, which goes back to much older, pre-Christian cults of the Celts and the Germanic peoples. They, too, venerated particular trees and groves as sacred beings and places, where the fundamental respect for nature that underlies all culture was celebrated.
The thirty-five mostly large-format photographs presented in this exhibition are accompanied by two objects made especially for the occasion by students from the Design Village in New Delhi and depict everyday Indian life under the trees. Finally, two films by Deidi von Schaewen on the ritual ceremony celebrated every twelve years in honour of the forest hermit Bahubali in Shranavabelgola, in the state of Karnataka, close the exhibition.
The ‘Sacred Trees of India’ are the focus of a series of events this year in honour of trees and forests. The name “Boisbuchet”, which some interpret as a pyre for burning witches, but others simply translate as “forest of brushwood”, justifies the theme in itself. But the reason is the forest itself, which is omnipresent in Boisbuchet as a source of energy and materials for work, as a source of inspiration for creative experiments and as a place of rest, and even in a hidden forest cemetery.