Reforms through art

In what can be termed as a “one of a kind initiative”, the city is playing host to a painting exhibition with artworks done by inmates of the Chanchalguda jail.

Over 70 paintings, including pencil sketches,  charcoal works and watercolours by 22 prisoners are up for sale at nominal prices. The initiative started three months ago, when Krishnakriti’s in-house artist and curator Sayyad Shaiekh began training inmates on the finer nuances of painting. Says Sayyad, “I was scared when I initially set foot in the jail, after all there is this preconceived notion that they are quite different from us. They were a stubborn lot who would often ask, ‘what use is all this to us?’”

It took some time to break the ice and develop a bond with them. He says, “After three or four classes their creativity began to shine through. Every prisoner had a vision, from their own struggles to their innermost fears.”

They used sketching and painting as a means to showcase these feelings, he says, adding, “Although, they didn’t know how to paint, they started off initially with simple sketches, forms, shapes and perspectives.”

The idea of an artcamp was the brainchild of the DGP of Prisons and Correctional Services Vinoy Kumar Singh, who felt that the country’s correctional services aren’t given the importance they deserve. “Correctional services play an important role in changing the mind set of inmates. We not only save money by preventing future crimes, we give the society a self-serving human being.”

And he is certain that teaching horticulture or agriculture are not the only options for correctional services. “If the inmates learn the finer nuances of life through art they can not only make a decent living but their mind becomes calm too,” he says.

The seeds for this venture began when V.K. Singh called Prshant  Lahoti, who runs the Krishnakriti foundation, to give a lecture to the inmates on art. “After I gave my speech many inmates showed considerable interest towards art. So we initially decided to train them one hour every week but after seeing the kind of art the inmates were coming up with, we increased it to two hours per week.”