JEHANGIR NICHOLSON ART FOUNDATION
Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in collaboration with CSMVS and KNMA presented a two-day event of dialogue and performance as part of the exhibition, "Earth as haven: under the canopy of love" by Jayashree Chakravarty.
Jayashree Chakravarty was born in Khoai, Tripura in 1956. She completed her BFA at Visva Bharati, surrounded by the sprawling nature of Santiniketan. She then earned her MFA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, where she was exposed to the strikingly different urban environment. From 1993 to 1995, Chakravarty was an artist in residence at Aix-en-Provence, where she was influenced by the French movement, ‘Supports/Surfaces,’ and was especially inspired by Claude Viallat.
Her formative years were spent in Calcutta, in proximity of hills and forests, and a variety of flora and fauna. The township soon became a concrete jungle, with few traces of the natural past left behind. This change influenced her paintings, where she melded the old and new cityscapes together with skilled expertise. An occasional bird, a broken window, or a brick wall emerge from the mossy hue and mouldy texture of some of her works.
Developing her own artistic techniques using organic material and varied kinds of papers, Chakravarty’s paper scrolls installations remain unique in their conception and execution. Her works are autobiographical and dream-like in nature; the ink on paper sketches are exercises in transition and transform personal experience into mystical truth. She experiments with an exciting variety of media like rice paper, tissue, and cellophane. She also superimposes forms, similar to the sketches that cave painters worked on before they mapped them on the walls of caves. Because of her fluid and transparent images, Chakravarty’s imagery reflects the present mood of the world, which is fluid in itself. At a mere conventional and figurative level, her works reflect the unity of man with nature. Motifs such as dogs, waves, and serried crescent shapes recur in her works.
She received the Gujarat Lalit Kala Akademi Award and the Second Bharat Bhavan Biennale Award in 1988. She was also honoured with the Bombay Art Society Award in 1980 and the Honourable Mention Award from the Asian Art Biennial, Dhaka in 1997, among others. Chakravarty lives and works in Calcutta.
Astad Deboo is the pioneer of modern dance in India. He has trained in Kathak and Kathakali – dance styles from both the North and the south of the country.
He studied the Martha Graham dance technique at London and has worked with acclaimed performers like Pina Bausch of the Wuppertal Dance Company and Alison Chase of the Pilobolus. Astad has brought all these different experiences together to create a style that is uniquely his own.
He has been awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1996 and Padma Shri in 2007, for his contribution to contemporary dance in India. He has danced on the Great wall of China, performed with Pink Floyd in London, and was commissioned by Pierre Cardin to choreograph a piece for the legendary prima ballerina of the Boshoi ballet company Maya Plissetskaya.
The Astad Deboo Foundation, formed 12 years ago, looks to provide creative training to both the able and the disabled, and to facilitate the artistic development of talented deaf dancers. His most recent achievement was his invitation to Buckingham Palace to inaugurate the UK-India Year of Culture in 2017.
