CHENNAI: DakshinaChitra, conducted a three-day seminar on environmental consciousness in current Indian art, which explored art, architecture, heritage and community engagement. Organised and moderated by Neeta Omprakash and Kathryn Myers, the talk saw eminent speakers from a host of professions, including Ravi Agarwal, Maya Kovskaya, Veer Munshi and Neeta Omprakash.
At the meet, exhibitions were inaugurated and the film, Before the Floods was screened. The seminar ended with a heritage walk led by temple historian Chithra Madhavan.
With Kathryn and Neeta giving the welcome speech, followed by a talk on developments in heritage and tourism by conservation architect, Benny Kuriakose, the seminar focused on sustainability to build environment through heritage and conservation. “One of the mistakes made in some cultural tourism projects is the lack of coordination between the tourism administrators and custodians of the monuments,” said Benny. He insisted that the focus should be on local economy generating jobs, promoting traditional industries and craft.
In another talk, Bengaluru-based artist Krishnaraj Chonat spoke of the importance of the sense of smell in artwork which speaks to audiences in a subtle manner which we often miss. Taking a cue
from Heidegger’s idea that artwork should choose to “manifest, articulate and reconfigure” he spoke about how contemporary art allows for us to process politics and history in slowly. “This is not possible within the mainstream media culture which is obsessed by novelty and speed,” Krishnaraj opined.
An excited audience of curators, artists and students heard keenly the speech by Charmi Gada Shah, a Mumbai-based artist, who spoke about architecture, reconstruction and memory. She spoke about spaces that had either been abandoned, neglected or in a state of disuse. “By employing different media like drawing, sculpture, photography, film and architecture, I create a network of correlations that play with notions of memory, place and destruction.”
Through the process of revisiting, mapping, building and understanding old properties, she tried to draw the crowd’s attention to the spaces that were once lost in time.