Vishnu Prasad K.V. remembers sketching little creatures—with human limbs and ‘butterfly’ heads—during COVID-19 pandemic when he sat idle in his room. ‘Shadow of Obscura’ is a motion installation which rotates when the button attached is pressed and the butterfly-headed creatures appear to be moving in a circle.
“I used many motors, but they all collapsed,” Vishnu says. It took him enough attempts to come up with a “suitable motor” for his project. In the absence of light, it is difficult for one to comprehend any movements in the model.
Other installations at the ‘Art for Hope' exhibition at Travancore Palace in New Delhi include Sanjhi papercut art from Mathura, Lippan art from Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh’s Kalamkari. Importantly, the exhibition has been made accessible to visitors with mobility issues, and hearing and visual impairments through little, tactile replicas of many artworks; audio-visual sign language tours and braille descriptions.
Organised by Hyundai Motor India Foundation (HMIF), ‘Art for Hope’ is a three-day event felicitating 50 grant-winning artists from 15 Indian states, with a total grant of 60 lakh.
The PARROTHOUSE’s podcast is a series of five episodes: A Story and A Song, The Mermaid of Pondicherry Coast, The Braying Lion, The Magic of the Jackal and The Osari Festival—a story from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands about a community’s forgotten bond with nature.
Dr Maneet Kaur’s project is all about Phulkari and womanhood. She embroiders daily-life activities like three women, sitting in order of their age, one of them settled on a cot. A frame has the word,‘dhi’—meaning ‘daughter’ in Punjabi—embroidered with white floss. Each beige patch stitched against a grey frame contains colourful peacocks, flowers, pink birds and green and blue (representing grass and sky) stretches in the background. A white floss has often been used to outline objects in the picture.
Ghana Shyam Latua is an artist from West Bengal. His artwork, ‘Territory in Transition’ is a representation of land encroachment by humans. Latua uses ink on paper to scribble grasses and pathways. “With a pin or needle, I scratched and pried off the paper,” he says. According to him, the pulled-off paper is symbolic of the human damage done to natural terrains.
