The School of Arts is making it mandatory for students to have their works vetted by a committee
Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication at the University of Hyderabad art department wants to make sure that they check what students will display as part of their final exhibition
This is currently a big topic of discussion at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication at the University of Hyderabad. The department wants to make sure that they check what students will display as part of their final exhibition, but students feel that this could be a case of censorship. A circular posted last week in the department of Fine Arts made it “mandatory” for Final Year students “to submit their work” in a CD, for “reviewing and sanctioning… before exhibiting their work”. This has revisited a problem that the art world has been battling for years now — censorship.
“The agenda behind the committee is not clear and we weren’t given a proper answer as to why it has been formed. When no art college around the country has such a committee, then why is it being formed here?” asks a student, adding, “We were told that in 2007 a student’s art work was quite controversial, so measures had to be taken. But why form a committee now after eight years?”
However, Dean B. Ananthakrishnan maintains that the committee has been formed only to help select the best work.“We are not censoring work. We only want people to view the best work of our students, so we wanted to have a look at the work. Besides, this is part of the academic work and teachers need to know what their students are working on,” Ananthakrishnan says. Student Kunal Kalra, who has submitted his works, agrees.
He says, “I feel that the committee just wants to select the best work. Since we are displaying our work outside the department, teachers only want the best work to be displayed, so I think it is fine.”Anoop Daniel, another student from the department says, “Students want the committee members to have a healthy and open discussion with us. We would like to know what they feel about our work, and an open discussion is a good way to go about it.”
Next Story
