According to experts, the Indiancontemporary art is undergoing a change in its practice, education, productionand its reception. There is a crisis in art education and the artists arefinding themselves in a situation akin to being unable to bell the cat. With theobjective of forming a meeting ground for exchanging contemporary arts andideas, an art conclave was organised on October 3 and 4 at the InternationalCentre Goa. The conclave included talks, lectures, retrospectives anddiscussions between the faculty and students of different colleges across thecountry.
Suresh Jayaram, an artist from Bangaloresays, “We don’t have a national body that governs the art colleges and thesyllabus and the method of teaching. The art colleges across the country arechurning out students who are not proficient enough to handle the differentcontemporary contexts. One important aspect of the conclave was to look at whatdifferent art colleges have done.”
One event that was met with tremendous responsewas the presentation by Vidya Kamat on her self-journey, on how mythology hasinfluenced her life and how it has created a new iconography for her.
Naguesh Rao Sardessai, co-organiser commented on this response bysaying, “The conclave was targeted at bringing together people interested inart, particularly upcoming artists who can gain knowledge and use it to getbetter vision and develop a holistic approach. It would have been good to see agreater number of younger Goans join in.”
The showstopper of the conclave was thepresence of renowned artist, Vivaan Sundaram who spoke about his project wherehe worked with the students of Baroda. He said, “Trying to draw a line in adifferent context by plastering paper all over the gallery was the approachthat we took. The project was executed after a series of events related tocensorship in Baroda. So this project was like a cleansing process to being innew energy. The event concluded with an attempt to look at fashion in a newcontext in the form of a presentation on constructing garments made out ofurban waste.”
The artists feel it is a long process tofind out what the recommendations and the remedies for art education in thecountry are. The most important thing is to focus on how to give the freedom toartists, how to broaden the perspective of art education, how to relate it tothe social, historical and political context and how to make them contemporary.
