Water – The Thread of Life
Group Exhibition of Contemporary Artists
Alphonso Arul Doss, Asma Menon, Jayakumar G, S Jayaraj, JMS Mani, Rekha Rao & Shailesh B.O.
21st – 30th March 2012
Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
This special Art Exhibition titled – “Water – The Thread of Life”, was organised by Arghyam to commemorate the World Water Day between 21st - 30th March 2012 at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. The show was inaugurated by Ms. Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam. Every year, 22nd March is observed as World Water Day across the globe to remind the inhabitants of the earth of their responsibilities to protect, save and conserve this precious natural resource.
This exhibition was a special curated show and was relevant for the reason that seven contemporary Indian visual artists from Bangalore and Chennai reacted to socio-political issue of water, its relevance and the risk inherent within the inevitability of nurturing cultivated water. The participating artists were Dr. Alphonso Arul Doss, Ms. Asma Menon, Mr. JMS Mani, Ms. Rekha Rao, Mr. S Jayaraj, Mr. Jayakumar G & Mr. Shailesh B.O. These artists are already known personalities in the field of visual arts not only for the art they have created but also due to the various sub-categories of art they have come to define—art pedagogy, art movements, criticism and the like. More than artists, they carry the mantle of being the eligible personalities for an art movement. This is exactly what they had done through this show. They responded to the issue of water in a way that is specific to visual arts. They connected water to gender issues, separated the problems of water between urban and rural situation, made a visual-story of the omnipresence and inevitability of water, connected cultivated and cultured water to pictorial language and have differentiated it from the untamed water, among other aspects.
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