Museum with native voices- Bengaluru-based IFA invites design experts and members of Kodava community to launch online museum
Working with Nitin Kushalappa, a researcher and also a member of the Kodava community, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) has conceptualized an online museum to be launched next year with design experts Upasana and Saurav Roy from Switch Studio.
According to Rathi Vinay Jha, chair of the Sandooka The Living Museum’s advisory group, “The project was started in 2021 in the light of keeping the younger generation of the community which is dispersed all over the world in sync with their heritage. This museum will provide an opportunity to reconnect with their culture.”
The Kodava people or Kodavas are actually an ethno-linguistic group from the region of Kodagu in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, who natively speak the Kodava language.
It is more than just some typical museum wall label, but it’s fitting for the native people to share the cultural history so that youth can catch the drift of their occupations, crafts social affairs and whole legacy.
Speaking ahead of the occasion, IFA informed that people can send stories along with photographs and audio or video clips, which will be curated.
Arundhati Ghosh, executive director, IFA is of the believe that the museum will help document and preserve the stories and heritage of the Kodavas, much of which remains undocumented.
As per Lina Vincent, Project Director and Curator, the vision for this to be a virtual space is completely devoted to the Kodava community. Hopefully the model will serve as a prototype for other communities that are slipping into oblivion.
