Concept: Art as a Medium
"In October and November 2009 I travelled to Kolkata and Delhi to run creative workshops
in a number of the DCT Centres. My plan was to introduce the women, teenagers and
children to techniques they were unlikely to have encountered in India and allow
them to experience the joy and fun of creativity for its own sake."
Many of the children made press prints, monoprints and clothes peg butterflies.
The teenagers at Rajarhat explored their dreams for their futures by drawing symbolically
within the shapes of mandalas. The women embroiderers plunged into garden collages
made from brilliantly coloured tissue papers.
Expressing oneself through art is a powerful therapy. It was a great privilege to
work with such dignified and courageous people and I am very much looking forward
to returning this year.
Valarie Armstrong
India has been known as a sea of thriving multicultural regions. Each region still
celebrates its colorful customs and festivals unique to the area. There is an underlying
unity but not at the cost of diversity. We celebrate this diversity of Indian Culture.
Art is the natural vehicle that negates the most tendencies to override and erase
multi-ethnicity. Art speaks for the lone voice as much as it speaks for the multitudes.
However the voice of art is never didactic, it plays upon our senses and imagery,
there by delicately suggests this intrinsic Unity of the human situation, eliciting
subtle, if different echoes from deep within us. Again, we celebrate this difference.
An inclination towards peaceful solutions to strife and Amity with all, and is a
natural corollary of such unified feeling that finds something of one’s own within
other, whereby harshly drawn lines are fade away and it becomes easier to resolve
conflicts peacefully.
Launched in 2009, “Art for Amity” will be an ongoing attempt to highlight this celebration
of diversity, and yet again demonstrate an underlying substratum of Unity leading
to Amity through exhibition, Seminars and Presentations.
On 11 May, 2004, The Parliament Forum for Human Development and Habiart Foundation
had organized a meeting to look into the current issues prevailing in the contemporary
art science in India. Some of the major areas of concern were as follows: -
- The theft of valuable art objects and pieces of Indian heritage
- The emergence of a booming fake art market
- Absence of a National Code of Conduct
It was resolved that important initial steps alleviate the above issues be identified.
Such steps include public awareness of these issues and the development of strategies
that will preserve and lead to the furtherance and security of the authentic Indian
art scene. With this in mind, it was unanimously proposed that a self-abiding Code
of Conduct for collectors, auction houses, art galleries, dealers, artists, journalists,
art publications, art foundations and official agencies would be developed in consultation
with all parties.
On 13 May, 2006 a meeting was organized in Kolkata. After deliberation it was resolved
that mechanisms need to be developed to assess the proliferation of fake paintings
that are infiltrating the art market, to restore dignity and ensure copy right protection
to the art fraternity. It was proposed that efforts should be made to mobilize the
creation of an ‘Arts Council of India’ as an autonomous body with the support of
Govt. of India. In November, 2008, another meeting was held in Delhi, at the Travancore
House to emphasize the fact that the government needed to take a major active initiative
in this direction.