Location: Galerie Romain Rolland
Date: Sat, 2010/03/27 – 11:00am – Thu, 2010/04/01 – 8:00pm
Price: Free
Category: Exhibition
Duration: From 11:00 am to 8:00 pm
A collaborative visual arts project supported by the Ford Foundation and initiated by Gautam Bhatia & Orijit Sen.
Preview on the friday 26 March 2010 at 6.30 p.m.
When art is deemed meaningful and serious, it finds a place in the gallery. However, when it is considered frivolous, commercial or popular its place remains on calanders, and hoardings. Desh Ki Awaaz is meant to bridge the gap, and replace ‘Serious Art’ with ‘Popular Art’. As a collaborative arts project the initiating group of graphic artist, architect, and writer fashioned a narrative, weaving together ideas from the contemporary urban Indian experience. At the core of the story lay five thematic ideas – politics, religion, film, cricket and family, ideas to which every Indian reacts, often instinctively, often violently. The story relied on the popular beliefs and expressions of these ideas to explore the moral and cultural dilemmas that dominate Indian life – corruption, greed, caste prejudice, materialism, communalism, gender inequalities and other areas of conflict.
In the initial stage of the collaboration, artists were employed to demonstrate the widest forms of traditional expression. Included among them were wood workers, miniaturists, Putua painters, Madhubani artists, among others. Through the course of the work,these artists used the same story as a base from which to develop their distinctive graphics and imagery. Tied as they all were to the narrative, the characters, places and backdrops remained constant throughout. It was possible to compose the story visually, using artworks as varied as Rajasthani miniatures, hoarding art, and Madhubani painting. Eventually 52 works were commissioned to be completed, along with a graphic novel called Lie, drawn as a 200 page Rajasthani miniature painting, and an animated film, Carnama.
This project is the brainchild of Guatam Bhatia and Orijit Sen. Gautam Bhatia is an architect by training, who brings together in his work architecture, writing and drawing in mutually reflexive ways and Orijit Sen is a designer, illustrator and comic-creator who has worked with visual narratives in a variety of media and styles.