As eminent artists are gearing up for this year’s Kochi-Muziris Biennale, young artists from the two Telugu states are also busy preparing for the Students’ Biennale, Kochi, where 14 students from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh will to put up their works at Kochi.
For curators Faiza Hasan and Noman Ammouri, what started as a year-long search has now ended with a rather interesting mix of artists and works.
Four students from Hyderabad — Venu Kotla from the JNAFAU and Anju Acharya, Pallav Saika and Dhrubajit Sarma from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad, are in the team.
“I’ve been visiting these universities for over a year. At JNAFAU, we had a workshop through which Venu’s work emerged. At the University of Hyderabad, we couldn’t host a workshop, but I was in constant touch with the students,” says Faiza.
The idea behind Venu’s work came from discarded rocks. “During the biodiversity summit, artists created sculptures and the unused rocks were dumped at the JNAFAU. When I saw those, the first idea that came to my mind was the story of the rocks and so, I created a documentary — Speaking Rocks. My work is largely based on the documentary and the perspective of a rock,” explains Venu.
Anju, on the other hand, chose a topic that has always been close to her heart — flora and fauna. “I collected flowers, leaves, dead insects and frogs from the UOH. I will create a video on degradation of nature. I have painted the images of all the things that I have collected and have put those in a video. There will be 21 images and 21 videos in one frame; there will be nine frames in total,” she says.
Assam-based Pallav and Dhrubajit worked on art inspired by the mood of their surroundings.
Says Dhrubajit, “In Guwahati, there is a lot of violence, but one gets used to it and it becomes part of your life. But Rohith Vemula’s suicide changed my thought process. I couldn’t ignore violence anymore. That’s what I used in my work.”
Curator Noman Ammouri, who worked with 10 students from the Department of Fine Arts, Andhra University, conducted site-specific art workshops for students. He says, “We hosted a site-specific ‘Dialogue in Transit’ workshop for students as an exercise in de-territorialising oneself following displacement and emplacement.”
Rajasekar Tippana (MFA final year) and Pratyusha Rao (BFA Final year) from the Department of Fine Arts, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, worked based on site-specific artwork.
Pratyusha explains, “This artwork looks like an installation, but is made using paintings, sculptures, etc. We recreated the famous Poorna Market in Vizag using materials we found. For the Students’ Biennale, we will be taking all these materials.”
