The photo festival themed ‘Reflections On Grace’ put up just outside the central lecture theatre on IIT-Madras campus as part of the week-long contemporary art festival Art Chennai, offered one an opportunity to reflect on art. On a hot Monday morning, Prashanth Panjiar, founder of Nazar Foundation, inaugurated the exhibition in the presence of the convenor of the festival, Sanjay Tulsyan.
Having already been on display last year at the bi-annual Delhi Photo Festival, Prashanth Panjiar, one of the curators of the photo festival, said that the photographs on display are a product of open-ended and a broad interpretation of ‘grace’. “It was a festival that invited photographs from the public. We received around 6,400 submissions from around 90 countries,” he said.
The ones that made it to Chennai offered an exciting take on disease, morality, history and relationships. The most popular set of photographs was clicked by South Korean Jason Sangik Noh, who presented compelling biography of cancer in pictures by interpreting the effects it has on human beings. The second most engaging set of displays was that of Myriam Meloni, an Italian artist, whose experiment has tried to capture the life and relationships of a sex-worker.
About the third edition of the festival whose focus is on ‘Environment, Heritage and Conservation’, Sanjay Tulsyan, said, “Art is a way through which we can start a dialogue. The intention was to expose common people to contemporary art forms and make it more inclusive.”
As many as 28 venues in the city, including the beach, IT parks, malls and colleges, will witness art works on display for a week. At the Ascendas IT Park, Sachin George Sebastian’s installation, which depicted the chaotic life that we lead in the metros, attracted a number of IT professionals. “All my work revolves around the migration, chaos and survival in India’s metros. I try to create a pleasant installation, mostly sticking to white, to offset the unpleasant chaos in the city that my work reflects.”
