CHENNAI: Art, across the ages, has always been credited with the ability to heal. It’s banking on this wisdom that teenagers Vaishnavi Girish Ramdas and Neharika Kishore began their project, wielding art to lend a helping hand to the Ray of Light Foundation. The answer, they discovered, was in putting together a crowdsourced online art gallery. Within a few weeks of its inception, their digital child — Ilo by Vane — has captured the imagination of young artists and appeased the tastes of many an enthusiast; all while contributing for the cause set forth by the duo.
All this began with an earnest interest to do something for charity. “I wanted people to have a good reason for giving their money; something that they can use and carry along as a bonus. I spoke about it to Neha and we narrowed it down to art,” recounts Vaishnavi. The idea was to set up a medium for young artists — up to 21 years of age — to showcase their works, and direct the proceeds to the organisation that works for the care of canceraffected children.
Ask them why they chose this particular charity, and Vaishanvi goes, “Both of us have known a few people who suffered from cancer, or have lost the battle to it. This is our way of trying to make a small difference.” It was then that they discovered that there was plenty of art around them. “When we decided that we wanted to sell art, we realised that a lot of our friends are artists. Almost immediately everyone was supportive and excited to be a part of it.
We reached out to friends of friends, and Instagram helped find more people too,” Neha explains. Then, it was a matter of getting the project up and running. “We didn’t just want to do it through Instagram; we wanted to use a more universally accepted way of buying art. Then, we purchased a template website,” says Vaishnavi. She shares they had plenty of help from their parents, who do quite a bit of work in the tech field. The site offers simple practicality — it lists the artwork on sale, and also gives you a little something about the artists behind the work.
Their Instagram page is more about connecting the artists and the collectors than pushing the gallery’s agenda. Despite the heat and sweat that went into it, the success when it came was unexpected. On the first day of the website’s launch (in the last week of July), the co-founders were thrilled to register four orders. That this offers a good deal of recognition for the artists who contributed to the cause only made the success sweeter.
With already artists from Pune and China pitching in, the duo wants to take the effort worldwide. It took a while for the two 15-yearolds to settle on a name for the gallery. When they finally landed on Ilo, it was for the meaning of the word — ‘joy’ in Finnish. Since the start of the pandemic, people young and old have been doing what little they can to add to the cumulative stock of joy. It’s with that intention that these girls find themselves juggling teenage lives with a big-heart project. Well, here’s to them making it big.