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Contemporary Indian art meets tradition at inaugural ‘Sowing Seeds’ artist workshop in Rajasthan, India -interview

Posted by artradar on March 23, 2010

'Sowing Seeds' 2009 participating artists

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART WORKSHOP

The first edition of a new and unprecedented artists’ workshop in Rajasthan brings together traditional rural artists and urban international contemporary artists for approximately 12-14 days to create art and exchange ideas.

This project, called ‘Sowing Seeds’ (in Indian, ‘Beej Bonna’) is an interactive artists’ workshop and is to be held annually in an Indian countryside village every December with the aim of facilitating the ‘rise of a new era’ in Indian visual art.

The 2009 ‘Sowing Seeds‘ program became a reality after six years of hard work, and plans for the December 2010 workshop are already underway. Art Radar catches up with the lead organizer of the programme, Mr. Vagaram Choudhary, to learn more.

Why did the camp start, and what is it intended to achieve?

“Nowadays in India, contemporary artists tend to work in big cities and display their work in urban galleries. Therefore, Indian village people have few opportunities to interact with contemporary art and artists. In rural areas, there are artists who are traditionally sound but their awareness of creating contemporary art is lacking due to a scarcity of contemporary cultural knowledge. Thus, many rural artists lose their talent when they work only for commercial purposes. We hope these artists and communities can learn and enrich themselves through this camp. We are trying to sow seeds between the rural and contemporary art worlds… Our main motto to is to explore this idea on fairly nonprofitable grounds.”

“As an alternative art space in India, we have accepted the challenge of organizing and welcoming different art forms that would help develop traditional Indian artists and society, as well as the emerging contemporary artists.”

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