Jodhaiya Bai Baiga was born in 1938 in the Lorha village of the Umaria District, Madhya Pradesh. She earned a living by selling wood and cow dung in her village until her late 60s, when she met late artist Ashish Swami who began to mentor her and encouraged her to develop her practice as a folk artist. While speaking with author, collector and folk art revivalist Mitch Crites, Baiga mentioned how transformative painting had been for her as it... Jodhaiya Bai Baiga was born in 1938 in the Lorha village of the Umaria District, Madhya Pradesh. She earned a living by selling wood and cow dung in her village until her late 60s, when she met late artist Ashish Swami who began to mentor her and encouraged her to develop her practice as a folk artist. While speaking with author, collector and folk art revivalist Mitch Crites, Baiga mentioned how transformative painting had been for her as it allowed her the freedom to reimagine her world with her own hands. Her work is composed with a vivid palette and dynamic perspective that celebrates the traditional grammar of Baiga art and its subjects that convey the community’s deep kinship with nature. She has also painted contemporary scenes of man-made destruction, using ancestral forms of painting to communicate the ongoing violence of erasure and harm to her environment in inventive, authentic ways.

Baiga was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2022 and the Padma Shri in 2023 for her distinct contribution to the field of arts. Her works have been exhibited at the Galleria Francesco Zanuso in Milan, Italy, Claire Corcia Gallery in Paris, France and the Alliance Francaise in Bhopal, India. Many of them also belong to The Crites Collection, an expansive selection of folk and tribal art assembled over 45 years by Niloufar and Mitch Crites, and feature alongside the works of leading tribal artists such Jangarh Singh Shyam, Jivya Soma Mashe, and Lado Bai in the 2022 book Bhumijan: Artists of the Earth.

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