ENVELOPED in art, Bhubaneswar is a grand spectacle now. The City of Temples, which is hosting the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup for the second time, is celebrating not just hockey but also art in its varied mediums and styles. With the World Cup in mind, Bhubaneswar offered a rich canvas to artists from within the State, different parts of the country and abroad to explore their ideas of ‘society and heritage’, and ‘Odisha’s culture’ besides hockey and create unique pieces of art over the last fortnight.
A sculpture camp for 35 local artists and an international sculpture symposium for 16 artists from other parts of the country and abroad were organised by Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi under Odia Language, Literature & Culture Department, Bhubaneswar Development Authority and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) under the third edition of Street Art and Murals Project (STAMP 3.0).
As many as 51 sculptures, in three mediums of terracotta, stone and scrap, were created at the camps for STAMP 3.0 through which, BMC and BDA aim to showcase Odisha’s art and culture to visitors travelling to Bhubaneswar from across India and different countries during the Men’s Hockey World Cup, said Lalit Kala Akademi secretary Panchanan Samal.
While seven artists Manas Dash, Saroj Kumar Rout, Srikrishna Khanda, Biswajita Maharana, Biswaranjan Kar, Prithviraj Singhdeo and Narrottam Das worked on terracotta murals to showcase Odisha’s culture, hockey history and enthusiasm around hosting the World Cup, 10 artists worked with scrap materials. The rest of the sculptures were beautifully done in sandstone and reference to hockey was central to the work of many sculptors.
One of them, Amiya Ranjan Ghadei in his work depicted the changing face of Odisha’s sporting scene, particularly hockey. His sculpture done in both sandstone and granite was designed in a manner that it showed hockey sticks placed inside a womb, representing Odisha which has birthed a culture of hockey. While Golakh Patra sculpted a model of an energetic hockey player and a growing city in granite, showing the emergence of Odisha as the sports capital of India and its economic growth, Binod Biswal created a lantern with hockey sticks by its sides and a golden ball at the centre.
“This work is a reflection of the struggle and hard work of Odia hockey players. The lantern symbolises the background of Odia players who are mostly from small towns and villages and the golden ball at the centre is a depiction of their struggles to bring the sport of hockey to the place where it is today,” Biswal said. Similarly, Sudhir Ranjan Maharatha in his sculpture showed Bhubaneswar dressed as a beautiful bride for the world cup.
International artists like Khalid Abdullah, Sodong Choe, Elena Saracino, Alex Labejof and Carole Turner worked around themes of human life, femininity, and Indian culture, among other things. Meanwhile, BMC has started installation of the sculptures in various parts of the city, ahead of the World Cup that begins on January 13.