Shilpatru Art Event 2008

Shilpataru’s Art Seminar and Collaborative installation Workshop

Shilpataru, an art foundation run by artists of Pondicherry, for the first time organised an Art Seminar and a collaborative Installation Workshop on the 19^th, 20^th, 21^st of September at INTACH Heritage House, 62 Rue Aurobindo.

The invited speakers were Prof. Suresh Jayaram from Bangalore, a well known art critic and artist and Prof. Soumik Nandy Majumdar an experienced art Historian from Santiniketan. Mr. Suresh Jayaram gave an illustrated talk on Contemporary Indian Painting/ Sculpture – Trends and Movements and shared images of the works done at his Art Studio/ Gallery in Bangalore. Mr. Soumik Majumdar delivered a talk on ‘The Whereabouts of Art–Reflections on Practice and Environment’, showing through images the interesting avenues that art has taken around the world and stressing on the alternative art practices and environmental and outdoor works which could make our city more beautiful, changing the ordinary space into the extraordinary. The seminar was followed by open discussions and very interesting brainstorming sessions on art with the focus of what were the ways art environment could be enriched and made more dynamic in Pondicherry.

Prof. Suresh Jayaram also conducted a collaborative art workshop with the theme ‘Collecting Wishes for the City’ where everyone was welcome to participate using corrugated packing boxes in different sizes, using old photographs, photo copies of images of Pondicherry, maps of Pondicherry as collage material on these boxes. Also news papers in Tamil, Kanada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, English, French etc…were used adding a new dimension to the boxes and expressing the layered cultures that coexist in this cosmopolitan town. The participants were also free to paint on these cubes/ boxes with acrylic paints.

What this workshop aimed at was to thematically connect with images, views of Pondicherry, street names, sea, ashram, local maps etc. and turn the boxes into containers for collecting wishes for the city. A concept of tying your hopes, dreams etc to a totem. It was also an effort to surpass one’s individual ego, to create something which belonged to no one. Here the process was known but the end result was uncertain. The workshop became a way of knowing each other and liberating oneself of the individual ego. The installation finally was suspended in the open courtyard of this traditional Tamil house and all were invited to on a piece of paper write their wishes for the city and drop in the boxes displayed.

Shilpataru hopes to host such events more often in the future and invite the initiated as well as the non-initiated in art to participate, for only then can art become more living in our daily life. Art is not an end product only but it is way of life, an attitude towards things and understood in its broadest sense everybody is potentially an artist if he/ she learns to think and live creatively, open to change and sensitive to the happenings around life and nature.