The Night Life of Trees is an exquisite hand-bound and screen-printed book of paintings by three of the finest artists of the Gond tribal art tradition. The Gonds, a tribe of central India, are traditionally forest dwellers. They believe that trees are hard at work during the day providing shelter and nourishment to all. Only when night falls can they finally rest, and their spirits reveal themselves. These luminous spirits are captured in The Night Life of Trees, a fascinating and haunting foray into the Gond imagination. Each painting is accompanied by its own poetic tale, myth or lore, narrated by the artists themselves, which recreate the familiarity and awe with which the Gond people view the natural world. Screen-printed by hand on black paper, every page of this book is an original print. Each book in this limited second edition of 1,000 is individually numbered.
Oh, wow. This book is more of an experience than a read, to be honest. It's also definitely an art/picture book. I remember adding this to my list and thinking, "ah, this'll probably be something wordy and technical, hard to understand". Oops.
Book content warnings: eye horror (visual) body horror (visual)
The Night Life of Trees is a collection of screen prints from three of the most celebrated artists from the Gond tribe of central India: Bhajju Shyam, Ram Singh Urveti, and Durga Bai. Each print (set on black paper) is accompanied by a tiny folk tale/myth about each tree in the print. The book is huge and stunning, and it's nothing like I've ever seen before. The tales themselves aren't very involving themselves, and would be pale on their own, so I'm very glad this isn't just a collection of tales. But with the pictures, as a whole this book is gorgeous.
