India-Art
The Indian government
has honoured 10 artists — including five painters, two graphic artists and two
sculptures — with the annual Lalit Kala Akademi's national
awards (for the year 2014) for their "exemplary" works of art that
reflect the new encounters in Indian aesthetics, the technical diversity
and finesse in practise which Indian artists are known for. This
is the 55th edition of the awards considered to be one of the most
prestigious prizes in the domestic art world.
The prizes and an accompanying visual display (the
National Exhibition) recognise creativity in content,
innovation of thought and mastery over practises of art in the
contemporary segment.
Art practises in India take in their stride 5,000
year old aesthetic lineage linked to the civilisational history and
the universal global languages for
a contemporary indigenous idiom that is more "glocal" than
international. The Akademi looks for emerging artists whose works and
perspectives of thought best represent these "ongoing
currents" in Indian art.
The theme of the national art awards for 2014 is "Of
Challenges and Responses — Civilisation in Stress".
Explaining the nature of selections, K.K.
Chakravarty, the chairperson of the Lalit Kala Akademi, the country's
national apex body of art, said a two-tier jury selected the 10 winners from
submissions of thousands - invited by announcement in newspapers and
the media from across urban, mofussil and rural habitats across India.
Chakravarty said art in India had to connect to the settlement patterns
and human lifestyles first; before "assimiliating from the east-west
encounters across civilisations".
"It has to build bridges between the corporeal and
the incorporeal, figurative and the non-figurative, to express the
inexpressible and to communicate the sense of urgency to diagnose and cure
radically fractured human condition. It reminds us that 'hidden worlds connect
to things that hide them, within the red wood bark lies moss under which are
roads and insects: Tide pools connect us to unfathomable seas which connect to
our chromosomes," the chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi
(apex art institution) said.
In a curatorial note, chairman Charavarty said
"escape from the civilisational crisis has been sought in the
fragmentation, reconstitution and objectification of organic and inorganic
forms or to elusive, transient and uncertain mutations of visible
reality". The 55th National Exhibition of the Lalit Kala Akademi and the
awards "look at the world made by human beings in the eye and creates a
spectrally heightened and distorted actuality, autonomous self-evolving
structures, in tune with the
transformative leavening power of nature. The exhibition
tried to lend extraordinary meaning to ordinary
objects by associating them in unforeseen
permutations". .
The national award carries a purse of Rs 100,000. The categories include oil,
acrylic, bronze, charcoal,
etchings and ceramic art.
The chairman of the
Lalit Kala Akademi said "the
awards in 2014 were significant because
all the artists wanted their art works to be
displayed in New Delhi. Earlier, the Akademi
for nearly last two decades had been carrying the ceremony and the exhibition to the states to "connect to a wider audience". One of the reasons that guided the Akademi's decision to "host the awards and visual showcase in Delhi was the fact that it would draw international attention and build a pool for the Akademi's Triennale exhibition in 2015 end by opening new dialogues. Moreover, the Kochi Biennale scheduled for Dec 2014 and the India Art Fair thereafter in early 2015 could use the Akademi's pool of talent for its curational
exercises — as a complimentary collation space.
"We want to pitch our talent at international events
in the country and abroad as a platform and
exchange forum. The prize is not
an one-off engagement with young Indian art," the chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi said.
The National Art Award Winners for 2014:
Anamika Vijayaveeraraghavan
Kaushik Halder
Manoj Kumar Mohanty
Mohammed Ayazuddin Patel
Nongmaithem Nandaraj Singh
Rajesh Kumar Singh
Sanjeeva Rao Guthi
Shrinivas Govindrao Mahetre
Srinivas Reddy N
Sumana Som
-Madhusree Chatterjee
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