Aditi Panda
Project Pankhi was the brain child of Jaya Gaur’s special interest to do something for the village community and to benefit people by inspiring them to become self dependent.
Odisha is recognized worldwide as a land of a wide-ranging art and gifted artists. Art reaches new heights when it is in collaboration between the local artists with their contemporaries from across the country.
To exhibit this veracity, Project PANKHI was organised from 1st-6th August at Bhopatpur village of Azamgarh. This community based art project was a joint initiative of a Bhubaneswar based Sasatwa Foundation with Rekha Smriti Trust from Azamgarh. Rekha Smriti Trust was founded by Mrs. Jaya Gaur, an art enthusiast from Azamgarh. This trust works for rural development by creating self employment opportunities through art, craft and design in Bhopatpur.
On the other hand Sasatwa Foundation was founded by Satyabhama Majhi, an accomplished artist, for the development of women and children through art. Odisha Live spoke to Satyabhama Majhi who shared the first hand information on this laudable initiative.
Project Pankhi was the brain child of Jaya Gaur’s special interest to do something for the village community and to benefit people by inspiring them to become self dependent. This desire was became a real endeavour by converging with Satyabhama Majhi and her fellow colleague and artist Sidharth Mohanty, a designer based in Bhubaneswar with a vast experience of working on various social development programmes.
In a one week long community involvement Art project the local village women and children helped to create wall art and children’s park. The wall art was created by the women who made drawings based on their rural culture and transformed them on the walls filled with vibrant bright colors. These women were guided by the invited artists from across the country. In addition to that there were sculptors who created larger than life forms to create a playground for kids of the village and to create enthusiasm amongst the kids for art and creativity.
The organisers wanted to build up a penchant towards art and craft by involving the village community and creating wall art .It was also the first step to kick off further projects of social development. This attempt also acted as a motivation to connect and assemble the community to live a self-dependent lifestyle through self-employment.
8 artists along with the women from the village creatively did the wall art. Every artist interacted with each woman on a one on one level and helped them to brainstorm and pick up elements from their day to day life in the village to create the design. The elements were directly related to art like alpana or their traditional wall art during weddings or from their regular household activities like cooking or cleaning etc. The artists then further helped them in imagining and creating forms out of their imaginations and depicting them on walls. The project did not concentrate on artistic technique.
3 artists assisted to build a sculptural park for children with the idea of “Education through Game”. The artists were supported by men and children of the village. Since children these days spend most of their leisure time in digital games, this project created artistic sculptures that engaged forms and shapes that were fun and created enthusiasm in children to play together. It also encouraged the concept of community activity right from childhood. This sculptural park also included elements of academic interest that helped children in learning through games.
The remaining 3 other artists captured the commendable project process in loving clicks through the camera and documenting the entire project so that the lessons learnt will pave a way forward to design the upcoming projects of similar nature.
The talented artists invited in this programme were Aditi Bhattad (Nagpur) , Biswajit Sahani, Julius Das, Kalyani Uday (Mumbai) , Nirod Nalini Behera, Nityananda Ojha, Pinaki Mohanty, Pratap Chandra Jena, Priyadarsini Mohanty, Saroj Kumar Rout, Satyabhama Majhi, Sibdas Sengupta and Sidharth Mohanty.
