Goa’s Smallest Big Tradition: The Mini Narkasur Archive

Free
Special Project
Exhibition

Curated by
Diptej Vernekar

Directorate of Accounts

First Floor

14th December - 21st December

12:00 PM - 07:00 PM

DATE

TIME

VENUE

QTY

What happens when a demon shrinks?

The Narkasur, once a towering spectacle of fear and festivity, is scaled down to a fragile, handheld effigy. Paper, wire, and pigment transform the mythical destroyer into something intimate, approachable, and almost tender. The spectators becomes larger than the figure they once looked up to—circle it closely, observing details that the monumental would have eclipsed.

Scale collapses; power shifts. The miniature has the power to invert traditional hierarchies of scale and meaning. Monumental figures dominate space, asserting their authority through size and spectacle. The miniature, by contrast, invites a different kind of encounter—one of proximity, curiosity, and play. The Mini Narkasur tradition does exactly this: it reimagines tradition in small form, shifting control from the figure to its makers and viewers, altering the dynamics of reverence, fear, and dominance embedded in the tradition.

Over the past 25 years, this tradition has also begun to liberate itself from rigid ritual timelines.

Once bound to Naraka Chaturdashi and the early dawn ritual of destruction, miniature competitions now spill beyond Diwali, sometimes lasting up to 15 days. This quiet rebellion expands the culture of Narkasur-making beyond its religious frame, allowing myth and craft to live longer, to travel further, to become a shared act of creation unconstrained by beliefs.

Yet, the small is not silent. Craft practices can reclaim and reshape narratives through process and materiality. These miniature effigies speak louder not through their physical scale or noise, but through the hands that construct them, the improvisation of local youth, and the fleeting ritual of their destruction at dawn. Goa’s Smallest Big Tradition asks us to reconsider power, time, beliefs and craft tradition that keeps reinventing itself in small yet powerful ways.

Credits

Mini Narkasur Artistic groups

Kiran Tamboskar - Technical Support

Siddhi Arsekar - Exhibition assistant

Utkarsh Naik - Image