Art Retreats: National Art Camp

In the tiny village of Malampuzha, near Palakkad, Kerala, 12 senior artists from across the country were busy at a National Art Camp. Amidst the 12 artists who were hand-picked, two were from the city — A. Rajeswara Rao and Sajid Bin Amar.

Nestled amid lush greenery, the art camp hosted by the department of cultural affairs and Kerala Lalithakala Akademi would start at 10 in the morning and end long after the sun set.

“The camp was for a week (June 20-26) and so we had to finish our work within that time,” says Sajid. The aim of the camp was simple — to provide a sort of corrective force in society through these artists’ works and both Sajid and Rajeswara did not fail to deliver.

Rajeswara Rao’s work was a satire on the situation that people are facing right now. “My studio is situated in a small village near Hyderabad and the one thing that I’ve noticed is that many people from the village sell their lands, become rich and move to the city, so I decided to showcase that through my work,” he says. The 4x4 feet artwork was done on an acrylic sheet.

While Rajeswara’s work showed this side of urbanisation, Sajid’s work touched another aspect of it — consumerism in urbanisation. “With urbanisation, consumerism has increased and the common man has so many options to choose from. People are always surrounded by huge ads, and cutouts of actors, so much so that some of them just accept that as a part of life. I’ve used a few of these ideas in my work,” says Sajid. Part of the mixed media also looks like ads in a newspaper.

But it wasn’t just work. Once the artists finished painting for the day, a discussion session with the other artists would be held. “It was a learning experience to meet so many artists, like Surendran Nair, Sajitha Shankar and Manoj Vyloor among others. Each artist who was part of the camp came from a different school of ideology and meeting them and looking at them work only widened our perspective,” Sajid adds.