Echoes and Reveries of Art Today: Three Events in Delhi

We all have two sides, one who we are right now, and the other we notice at a life-changing incident, at the passing of a loved one; among all the pretence, posing and ordinary pursuits, we sometimes live this other side too.

It glides over us, even when we are being our worldly selves, often suspended in a deeper planet, a hidden identity, only facing the truest traits of the world, the deepest pains, the sharpest emotions – a closest performance of thy self.

Yet here we are, in a world which constantly makes us who we must be, to face the malice and the superficiality of a community, a government, a clan.

Art often breaks these shackles and transports us to this other, truer world, and takes us through the many expressions of a broken, bonded society – and sometimes to a free, idealistic and liberated world. It comes with all the whatifs, whys, so what, fuck that.

Art is a community that enables the audience and creator to really question society, to passionately reject norms, to show a utopian world, just for a moment, often captured in stills and feats eternally.

How to See Art? Art of Seeing part 15, is an event being organised by Cobalt Blue Foundation, hosted by Sundeep Verma – an author, graphic novelist and storyteller, and Ruchi – a visual artist, art therapist and counselling psychologist. Together they engage in three hours of conversation about art – to understand the value and principles of different pieces of visual art, the effects it generates on our subconscious, also about art in general as a medium influencing society and the world.

The fifteenth such art meet, to talk, discuss, sketch and analyse art will take place at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi next week.

Art is a passionate example of fearless habits, that urge to constantly create thoughts in visual form, theatrical texts and moving enactments of one’s smothered senses. In a society filled with animosity, art is the whisperer of powerful voices – being heard by the ones who choose to listen, being stifled by the ones who crush voices and despise the ability to speak up and question. Yet we keep conversing, we keep moving, we keep engaging in flights of freedom.

We all have stories, strings of melancholy or comedic routines, callous dreams and invincible memories of a time gone by. Tape a Tale brings to the Delhi stage, Kahaaniya, personal first-person accounts of 10 Delhi storytellers, making it an evening of revelation of a hopeful narrator, a personal warrior, a witty serpent, speaking in the hope of engaging and creating an audience that would quietly collect poignant emotions, tips and imprints in its journey as a listener. A life-changing incident or a forever memory, these tales may become poignant five-minute biographical accounts of our lives.

As our nation heads to vote, art quietly speaks to the electorate – of how governments were toppled and wars were won, and lives lost, of how certain beings became bastions of hope in the fight to liberation, and how today conversations float around about the evils and failings of a few – and unlike its birth, art and its crusaders (recently) died a violent death; lynched, dismissed and wrecked, yet forever hopeful of a noiseless (and peaceful) return.

An Election Awareness Campaign hosted today by Girl Up India and Young Leaders for Active Citizenship will enlightening the many new voters and answer questions about candidates, their parliamentary performance; about detecting the warning signs of fake news; to take steps in a significant direction to create an informed voter and electorate.

Art has the power to say, re-tell, mingle, disperse, and often to create a parallel universe while it engages so very deeply in an unbreakable dialogue with all things it is surrounded by – love, politics, lies, loathing, passion, sunrises, sunsets, moonlight, death. It seeks to create an immortal universe, forever to be seen, acted and performed, among a mortal, fragile and finite existence of things, thoughts and people.

Election Awareness Campaign, on April 2nd, 4:30-5:30pm, at the Facebook Gurgaon Office, 2 Horison Centre, Gurgaon

How to See Art? Art of Seeing 15, on April 7th, 2-5pm, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Kahaniyaa, on April 6th, 6-8pm, at Lower Ground Floor, Innov8 Coworking, Saket, New Delhi