Organizer: Arghyam

Venue: Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore

Arghyam is a public charitable foundation setup with an endowment from Mrs. Rohini Nilekani, working in the domestic water and sanitation sector in India since 2005. Arghyam supports projects to promote water and sanitation security with stress on people’s participation and awareness. Domestic water is primarily a women’s burden and disproportionately impacts women and the girl-child in multiple ways. Therefore, promoting gender equity is an important facet of Arghyam’s work. The projects are spread across all geographies – deserts, mountains, flood-prone regions, rain-fed, coastal and tribal areas, representing the diversity in the country.

Description:
This special Art Exhibition titled – “Water – The Thread of Life”, a group exhibition of Contemporary Artists is being organised by Arghyam to commemorate the World Water Day between March 21-30, 2012 at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. Every year, March 22, 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.

The exhibition, a special curated show, is relevant for the reason that seven contemporary Indian visual artists from Bangalore and Chennai have reacted to socio-political issue of water, its relevance and the risk inherent within the inevitability of nurturing cultivated water. The participating artists are 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 have done through the current show. They have responded to the issue of water in a way that is specific to visual arts. They have 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.

This socio-political-cultural aspect of water through an art exhibition will be inaugurated by Ms. Rohini Nilekani, Chairperson, Arghyam on March 21, 2012.

Click here for general information regarding the history of water in relation to human civilization in contemporary context.

Contact details:
Ms. Nivedita Mani, Arghyam
Phone: 080-41698941/42,
Mobile: +91 9243492951
Email: nivedita@arghyam.org

Website: http://www.arghyam.org/