Media, Communication and Traditional Painting: Exploring Srimanta Sankaradeva’s Visual Culture in the Context of Ecological Consciousness and Global Sustainability

The study ‘Media, Communication & Traditional Painting: Exploring Srimanta Sankaradeva’s Visual Culture in the context of Ecological Consciousness and Global Sustainability' investigates the interdisciplinary connection between traditional painting, visual communication, ecological consciousness and global sustainability in the context of the Srimanta Sankaradeva’s cultural and artistic heritage. Sankaradeva was one of the key architects of the Neo-Vaishnavite revival of Assam and used visual culture to be a potent medium for imparting spiritual, ethical, social and cultural values. It explores the visual legacy of Sankaradeva, such as the illustrations written in his manuscripts, narrative images, performative visuality, symbolic motifs, and the art of the community, as communicative structures that articulate harmonies of human, natural and cosmic worlds. Inspired from the theories of visual culture, environmental humanities, cultural ecology and media studies, the research is intended to rethink the traditional painting as not only an artform, but as a indigenous knowledge system which can provide inputs to the current ecological discourse, sustainability oriented communication (Neog, 1980).

This study is qualitative interdisciplinary which combines historical analysis, visual interpretation, iconographic analysis, textual investigation, and critical discourse analysis of the literary, artistic, and cultural sources. The results indicate that the visual culture of Sankaradeva contains messages of interconnections, co-existence, care of the environment, community responsibility, and cultural sustainability, which are very relevant to the current global issues of climate change, conservation of biodiversity and sustainable development. Finally, the research suggests that the traditional visual story has a potential for use in the context of cultural preservation, environmental communication and sustainability education in today's globalizing world. The study offers a new paradigm for the conservation and integration of indigenous artistic knowledge into international sustainability agendas, by placing it in the context of wider international strands of interest and discussion on ecological consciousness and sustainable futures. The research broadens the scope of the research in the field of visual culture and provides new approaches to art history, media and communication, environmental humanities and interdisciplinary sustainability research (Vatsyayan, 1983).