From the ‘Concerns’ Desk ... February 2008

Mind the Gap

Indian contemporary visual art discourse established its roots mainly through debating the centre-periphery issues pertaining to human life and its socio-political and culturally defined existential structures. A cursory look at these debates clearly shows that most of them have been done by and in the urban-centric academic institutions. Even the bio-data of the Indian contemporary artists show that most of them have completed their education in these mainstream academies. What happens to those students who study art at several regional art colleges, which are generically termed as ‘local art colleges’?

A quick survey done by www.artconcerns.com reveals that the innumerable ‘fine arts colleges’ functioning from all the states in India fail to ‘produce’ students who could establish themselves as major artists in the contemporary Indian art scene. All these colleges lack in basic educational facilities, efficient faculty members and essential infrastructure. 99% of the art students fail to get admission in mainstream art colleges for higher studies thanks to their poor academic background and ill confidence. This lack of confidence comes mainly out of these students’ inability to communicate effectively in a commonly understood language (English and Hindi) and their poor exposure to the modern and contemporary art practices.

In terms of technique and drawings skills the students from these local colleges are as good as the students from the mainstream colleges. However, their conceptual faculties have been benumbed by poor exposure. Though we could say that enhancement of the infrastructural facilities and standard of education is the prerogative of the state governments, it should be noticed that the neglect from the general art scene also causes further marginalization of these colleges and students.

What could be done to support these colleges and the students? Artconcerns.com feels that those successful artists, galleries and other art related establishments could contribute towards this immensely. Artists hailing from a particular region can adopt a local college and support it with visual materials, books, DVDs and any other educational materials. Also they can conduct workshops and seminars in these colleges (free of cost) twice a year. Besides, they can identify talented students and nurture them slowly but steadily.

The galleries and publication houses can support these colleges (after identifying one or two colleges of their choice) by contributing catalogues, brochures and other publications in order to uplift the conditions of these college libraries. Also these resourceful galleries can adopt a few students and promote them to gain higher education and exposure. While most of the galleries do talent hunting at the annual displays of the mainstream colleges, a part of their energy could be invested in visiting these local colleges too. These visits need not necessarily give returns to the galleries. On the contrary it would be a moral booster for the local college students who consider such visits as heavenly visitations.

Some of the contemporary artists have already started working towards helping out colleges from their own regions, though not directly. Subodh Gupta takes a lot of interest in the Bihar art scene. Bose Krishnamachari has already made initial steps towards establishing a library of international standards in his home town in Kerala. Chintan Upadhyay incorporates the students from the local art colleges in the Sandarbh workshop initiated by him. Senior artist Sudhir Patwardhan has been working on a project to link up the urban centric contemporary art practice with the local areas in and around the state of Maharashtra. N.S.Harsha in Karnataka does workshops with the local schools and local colleges. So is Manjunath Kamath, who has recently set up a studio in Mangalore to help out the students from the local colleges. Sanjeev Khandekar makes efforts to connect his home village Sangli with the urban mainstream through his visual and literary creations. Somu Desai, a Mumbai-Baroda based artist makes relentless efforts to enrich local colleges in South Gujarat. In Mohile Parikh Centre for Visual Arts, Mumbai, Shiela Parikh and the art critic and program director Amrita Gupta Singh have done a few seminars for the students from the local art colleges in Maharashtra.

These fine gestures should be lauded and appreciated. And we expect more and more artists and art establishments come forward to identify and support the local fine arts colleges in India.

JohnyML

johnyml@gmail.com