50 artists from 17 states of India, home to our Tiger Reserves, came to Delhi to showcase their artwork. Their aim – use their passion to tell stories from their homes – remote villages in some of India’s far-flung protected areas where nature and humans have coexisted in harmony for years.
Radheshyam Kherwar stays near the Kanha Tiger Reserve, where he earns his livelihood through farming. Painting is a passion, one that he’s used effectively to depict stories from his homeland, and sometimes tales he’s heard from his grandmother of a forest where trees and animals were worshipped.
Janvi Sahare explains why her Gond artwork uses a bare tree as a symbol of what we are doing to our forests – slowly peeling off its green cover, wherein it loses its ability to protect the flora and fauna it supports as a vibrant and rich forest. This artwork of hers is titled ‘Tiger in deforested woods’, where the tree bark resembles the highways that are cutting through some of our most pristine forest areas.
Their work was a part of a tribal art exhibition titled Silent Conversation: From Margins to the Centre. It featured around 250 paintings https://cprpp.khm.gov.ua/ and 30 crafts drawn from more than 30 tiger reserve areas, including traditional tribal styles like Gond, Warli, Bhil, and Saura, blending bold depictions of wildlife, forest life, and human figures.
The artworks often conveyed ecological wisdom: how tribal communities view forests as sacred, maintain wildlife (especially in tiger habitats), practice sustainable living, and use customs passed through generations to protect their environments.
Apart from art, the exhibition aims for impact: offering alternative livelihoods to forest-dwelling artists, raising awareness among urban audiences about tribal roles in conservation, and emphasizing the overlap between tiger reserves and tribal territories. Approximately 80% of the artists are self-taught, and many still live in or near forests. Proceeds from sales go directly to the artists.
For Manoj Gadpal, “The best part is that it engages common people and makes them aware of our culture and art forms, which I am really proud of.”
For conservation to become part of conversations, it is important that it connects people emotionally to the natural world in ways facts and data often cannot and art like this can be a window to that world. Through visual storytelling, artists capture the beauty, fragility, and interconnectedness of ecosystems, helping audiences see forests, animals, and rivers not as distant resources but as living entities worth protecting. Tribal and folk art, in particular, carries deep ecological wisdom, showing how communities live in harmony with nature and view it as sacred.
