Bengaluru: The agitation against the privatisation of Venkatappa Art Gallery persists, as artists took a somewhat tongue-in-cheek stand to protest the government’s actions.
Around 150 artists gathered at Venkatappa Art Gallery for live performances and a demonstration they call: MoU-Read, Rejected, Recycled - An Artistic Rejection of the Memorandum!
Bengaluru-based artist Smitha Cariappa baked a cake in the shape of the letters 'MoU', with its details inscribed on the surface. "The cake was cut into little pieces and shared among all those present," said the artist Surekha, who has been associated with the VAG Forum and the anti-privatisation protests since they began.
"The focus was to have an artistic rejection of the document itself." In another performance, copies of the MoU were handed out to the audience, who were asked to crush it at exactly the same time and throw the balls of paper up into the sky. “The scraps were collected and made to papier-mache at the end of the day,” said Surekha.
The event, which was open to everybody, turned out to be quite the family affair, as artists brought their children to participate in the line of activities that had been planned.
“People used origami, made paper boats and even used balloons on which they terms of the MoU were written, which were inflated and then popped,” she added.
The VAG Forum's protests received a burst of momentum when former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda wrote a letter to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, asking him not to be ‘misled by vested interests’ and to drop the proposal to hand over the gallery to a private entity.
