Through #DAFArtEducation Programs Overview, we are revisiting the projects that the foundation has undertaken. Supplementing its usual programming is an extensive education and outreach program aimed at encouraging a culture where art becomes a matter of active discussion and debate.
(The file contains an audio, please adjust your volume accordingly)
Lekha Poddar, the co-founder of Devi Art Foundation, shares her vision and sheds some light on the projects that the foundation engaged in the session 2019-20:
Kriti Sood (Curator & Art Educator), who has been long associated with Devi Art Foundation, delineates on the foundation’s Education Outreach Projects from the session 2019-20; focusing on its three major programmes, i.e.: Experiential Learning Module with Young India Fellows of Ashoka University, Library Sessions with the Masters in Photography students of Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts and Communication and Artroom presented by Artreach India.
Revisiting ARTROOM!
ARTROOM – an Artreach India initiative is a pioneering arts mentorship programme for young people living in care homes in Delhi. Since 2018, Artroom has been presented by Artreach India in collaboration with Devi Art Foundation.
The programme, initially designed & conceptualised by Deeksha Nath from Artreach, has been co-curated by Ita Mehrotra from Artreach and Kriti Sood from LAND (Learning through Arts, Narrative and Discourse).
Through Artroom, graduates from Artreach India’s rigorous one-year foundation course in art get to explore the range of options available for them to build a career in the arts. Monthly workshops are structured around contemporary thematic explorations and led by artists, designers, photographers, film makers, architects, curators and conservators wherein students explore opportunities, identify their interests, build networks and hone their skill sets towards successful futures.
Participating NGOs for session 2019-20 were Salaam Baalak Trust, Rainbow Homes Program, Udayan Care and Karam Marg. Sanskriti Kala Kendra was our Venue Partner for this series of sessions.
Charty started Artreach after seeing the impact a simple art engagement could have on the lives of homeless children in the New Delhi station. Her core team member and Director, Ita Mehrotra, is trained in visual art, art history and philosophy. She has worked with numerous social development and art institutions across the country, and has been heading programmes at Artreach since 2017. Looking back at the sessions for this year in brief:
Artroom Session with Puppeteer Anurupa Roy was a 5-day intensive series of sessions that focused on explorations around shadow through images, cutouts and projections – addressing how they work, what are the limitations, how to build a narrative, and so on. A word-to-word story was created that was almost absurd, and conversations surrounding what a narrative of absurdity brings to the table as a creative exercise and how we are so used to things being formalised even though life around is absolutely absurd, were discussed. The exercise highlighted through the story and the process how we should embrace absurdity in some way or the other.
Anurupa Roy is recognized as a major creative force in Indian Puppet Theatre and has been with us twice for Artroom series’, engaging the participants with her thoughtful and engrossing sessions, tapping into their young minds to nourish seeds of imagination. Thank you, Anurupa!
With Visual Artist and Educator Steve Downey, the session revolved around delving deep into abstraction of circular forms – from the galaxy to molecular structures alike. The participants were encouraged to play with the shape and produce artwork using various collaging techniques. The works were then shown at Steve’s exhibition at the Sanskriti Kendra later the same day, which was an exhilarating experience for students.
Steve is a visual artist, consultant and educator. Described as ‘explosion in colour’, his art is influenced by cultures throughout the world. Images here, shared by Artreach India. Swipe to see more pictures from the session.
Delhi based artist Tehmeena Firdos, came on board with a session, focussed on collaging and experimentation around creating photo-montages, exposing the students to new visions and techniques to play around with.
Tehmeena’s work centres around aspects like pulling the popular imagery out of context and appropriated to create seemingly surreal narratives, and hence, through her understanding of juxtaposition of visuals, the workshop helped the students to explore a fresh way of looking at collages.
Artroom Session with writer, poet & publisher S. Anand of Navayana took the shape of an engaging workshop where the participants got to dive into stories from the world of publishing while learning about collaborations between writers and artists. It introduced them to new ways of communicating and storytelling.
The workshop, spent listening to animated tales narrated by Anand, culminated with the participants making their own single page stories, visually inspired from artists Durgabai and Subhash Vyam’s work.
What happens when you stop to observe and look at the stories that surround you? Be it the people, the place itself, the walls, the structure, the animals – big, small and unseen – inhabiting the space? These were some questions that the participants probed in a fun session with Chandan Gomes. It took place on a visit to the Qutub Complex in New Delhi, where everyone was divided in groups to take pictures and make stories in a fashion less conventional than usual. Questions like “what does the monument stand for different people” were put forward and visual stories were captured to tell the tales, with ultimatum of being presented in the form of a photography book.
Chandan Gomes is a Delhi-based photographer. He currently teaches at the Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts & Communications, Delhi and Ashoka University, Haryana. Themes of beauty, imitation, and abandonment interest him as an artist.
The Artroom Session with INTACH took to film making. Spread over two days, the workshop was facilitated by Intach Delhi Chapter with first, the sit-down sessions, conducted to discuss visual storyboards and understand the technical aspects of film making, vis-à-vis the angles, editing etc. As a follow up, a short film on the theme of ‘environment’ was made from scratch. Titled “Mitti”, this short was a story of how from soil we come and to the soil we go, and such is the circle of ‘life’.
“For me art is the means and not the end”, Nilanjana says. Her sessions with the Artroom group were focused around the body and self. Through various observations and exercises, she engaged the participants into learning about one’s body and understanding physical impersonation, directly and from memory and delineated on how to reflect that through visual art and drawing.
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Nilanjana Nandy is a visual artist, educator and researcher.Swipe to see more pictures from the session.
Maya Krishna Rao’s fiery presence in the Artroom, brought more than just a push into the creative direction, it introduced the group to the world of theater, expressions, stories, sound and movement. The session touched on the theme of self in nature. Through various performative activities and her guidance, the participants did small series of acts pieced together by themselves. It is such sessions that leave an imprint on the minds of the young creators, artists, performers, learners.
Maya Krishna Rao is an acclaimed Indian theatre artist, stand up comedian and social activist. Swipe to see a short snippet from the session.
In October (2019) the Artroom group visited the special exhibition ‘Pra-kashi’ at National Museum, New Delhi for a curated walk through, led by Vinay Singh, a textile specialist from the ASHA Workshop; followed by a session with Deepshikha Kalsi. The exhibition covered millennia of woven textile history, coupled with extraordinarily woven textiles from the ASHA Workshop and the National Museum collection. The works were supplemented with Miniature Paintings and stories laced with history of textiles. Artroom sessions that happen at an exhibition always leave the participating students in awe and this one was no different. The group took part in a hands-on activity, with Deepshikha Kalsi to understand different forms of weaves and worked on small samples as well.
This February 2020, the Artroom group paid a visit to – Suññatā Samānta : Emptiness Equality – an exhibition curated by S. Anand, presented by Devi Art Foundation.
The aim of the session, apart from discussing the theme of the exhibition with its relevance today and understanding its nuances, was to understand the very making of an (any) exhibition and the roles that make it possible. The group was taken for a walkthrough by Priya Chauhan from DAF’s team who had assisted in the curation.
The follow-up session comprised of understanding the political unrest and translating thoughts and opinions surrounding the same into drawings. This session, led by Artreach India’s Anarya and Ita Mehrotra, started with them showing their own works and narrating situations that lead them to make these. This exercise resulted in some very moving sketches done by the participants on the spot, some even inspired by the artworks displayed at the exhibition.
Looking back at our youngest Intern at Devi Art Foundation!
Video credit: Artreach India
She came through Artreach India’s Artroom Apprenticeship Program and joined Devi Art Foundation’s Summer Internship Programme. Every year, DAF takes in interns for its Summer Internship Program and focuses on research, archiving and programming under the aegis of the organisation.
In this case, our intern was right out of school, applying for colleges, and had expressed her interests in researching, art and sociology while here. Apart from working on researching some loaned artworks that had travelled the world from Devi Art Foundation’s collection, she also read some of our recommended books, shared her insights on the same, paid a visit to the restoration lab, and looked at art on display and in storage.
Thank you Artreach India and Udayan Care Home for making this happen!
Taking a look at the Experiential Learning Module with Ashoka Univeristy’s Young India Fellows!
The Experiential Learning Module (ELM) with Ashoka University is a core component of the Young India Fellowship curriculum wherein the fellows work extensively on real-life projects, which compliment the YIF program.
For 2019- 2020, the shortlisted students engaged with the Devi Art Foundation’s art collection for six months. This program was formulated and designed to complement the academic learning for the (YIF) year by equipping the fellows with structured way of art research, archiving, exhibition making and curation. As the fellows came from different core disciplines at the university such as psychology, mathematics, literature etc, specially curated art modules, lectures, workshops and field trips became the core to develop the curriculum for the project and build the bridge between visual arts and other disciplines.
The ELM program was designed and mentored by Kriti Sood’s organisation LAND – (Learning through Arts, Narrative and Discourse)
Devi Art Foundation has had a long collaboration with the Ashoka University through its Experiential Learning Modules with Young India Fellows and modules that have formed a part of the course. Here, Palki Bhattacharyya (Ashoka University) shares her experience of collaborating with DAF for 3 consecutive years.
Palki Bhattacharyya leads the Experiential Learning and Development function of the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University. She manages the Fellowship’s stakeholder engagement and collaborations for projects under the Experiential Learning Module (ELM). Over the last 4 years, she has overseen the experiential learning journeys of 1000+ Fellows in over 200 teams. Palki is trained in creative leadership, liberal arts, and history.
Mitra (YIF) from DAF x ELM with Ashoka Univeristy shares her experience:
The exhibition that our ELM participants ideated upon was divided into rooms of a home and the various layers, notions, ideas, attachments, politics that surrounded it. We asked them to share their thoughts on one of the artworks they had picked during curation.
“The artwork I have picked is No star, No land, No word, No commitment by Mithu Sen. I chose this artwork to represent the bathroom in a house and what it means to me. I honestly could analyse and intellectualise it but the real reason why I picked the painting is the way it made me feel. There’s something very real and raw about it. The content of it, the colours, I can almost feel it touching me. It touches a very personal, uncomfortable yet pleasant chord somewhere, like tickling. This represents the personal, intimate self that you are in a bathroom. It simply feels like how a bathroom would feel for me.”, shares Mitra, one of the selected fellows.
“My personal favourite is Ravi Agarwal’s Femininities in which he explores sexuality and personal expression in a captured image featuring the artists himself. To me, this artwork possesses intricate layers with regard to its colour scheme, drapery of cloth, and most importantly the gazes of the two characters. This artwork fits our theme ‘The Home and the World’ by showcasing the two diametrically opposite worlds stuck in a single frame within the bounds of the bedroom, struggling to co-exist.”, shares Saumya, one of the selected fellows.
“From the collection, I was particularly pulled towards the artwork titled Create your Own by NS Harsha. Our proposed idea was to understand how the home and the world as spaces and as an experience combine together. This particular artwork symbolised how the idea of a kitchen makes me feel. The hand painting inside a Venus Flytrap. Even if the depiction is a simple visual with water colors, it is so layered. With the idea of food, oppression, eroticism, struggle and survival, creation and hands. His artwork is filled with an ambiguity that calls you to literally prepare your own meal and serve.”, shares Divya Sihag, one of the selected fellows.
“The artwork that resonated with me the most – Nicola Durvasula’s Reddy Maid II. Right from the title to the actual artwork resonated the most with me. It subtly captured the banality of gender (to deconstruct Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’) and the normalisation of hierarchy and biasness of one gender over the others when it comes to domestic work.”, shares Snehi, one of the selected fellows.
The Library Sessions!
‘Library Sessions’ – were devised and initiated with the students of Masters of Photography at Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in 2019-2020. The aim of these sessions was to integrate Devi Art foundation’s collection as part of the curriculum for the students and provide the same as a resource for their research and practice. In this regard, photographers from DAF’s collection were invited, to have a conversation around their works from the collection, as well as their current practice. These Library Sessions were presented by Devi Art Foundation and curated by Kriti Sood, Chandan Gomes and Bharat Choudhary.
Bharat Choudhary, an independent photographer and faculty for Photography at Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts & Communication, speaks about the Library Session with Gauri Gill at SACAC (Delhi).
Gauri Gill is an Indian Contemporary Photographer, living and working from New Delhi, India. Gill describes her practice as complex because it contains several lines of pursuit. These include an almost two-decade long engagement with marginalised communities in rural Rajasthan called Notes from the Desert (since 1999)—this ongoing archive contains sub-series. She has explored human displacement and the migrant experience in The Americans and What Remains. Projects such as the 1984 notebooks highlight her sustained belief in collaboration and ‘active listening’, and in using photography as a memory practice. Beginning in early 2013, Fields of Sight is an equal collaboration with the renowned Adivasi artist, Rajesh Vangad, combining the contemporary language of photography with the ancient one of Warli drawing to co-create new narratives. In her recent body of work, Acts of Appearance, (2015—), the artist has worked closely with the paper mache artists of the Kokna tribe in Maharashtra, using unique masks to tell fictional stories improvised together of contemporary life in the village. Working in both black and white and colour, Gill’s work addresses the twinned Indian identity markers of class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour; in it there is empathy, surprise, and a human concern over issues of survival. (Source: gaurigill.com)
Chandan Gomes, faculty at School of Photography (SACAC, Delhi), speaks about the Library Session with artist Ravi Aggarwal at Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts & Communication.
Ravi Agarwal has an interdisciplinary practice as an artist, photographer, environmental campaigner, writer, curator. His work explores key contemporary questions of ecology, society, urban space and capital. Photography has been a prime medium for him for over four decades, which has expanded over time to include video, public art, installations, and recently also printmaking. His key projects have long engagements for several years, and are often accompanied by published diaries and writings.
Praveen Jain is one of the most prolific photojournalists whose many photographs form an important part of the fabric of India’s socio-political history.
Amit Dutta, an Indian experimental filmmaker and screenwriter, is considered to be one of the most significant contemporary practitioners of experimental cinema. He is known for his distinctive style of filmmaking rooted in Indian aesthetic theories and personal symbolism resulting in images that are visually rich and acoustically stimulating. His works mostly deal with subjects of art history, ethno-anthropology and cultural inheritance through cinema, many times merging research and documentation with an open imagination. His films were screened at Sunnata Samanta: Emptiness Equality, an exhibition curated by S Anand, that challenged the many ways we view art and society in.
