Children to join arts event with their picture postcards

By Ashraf Padanna/Thiruvananthapuram

Schoolchildren will showcase their creativity with brush alongside artists from across the world who will immerse themselves in mix of paintings, digital images and various installations at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale opening on December 12.

Over 1,000 children drawn from schools in Kochi have come up with postcard-size paintings as their bit of contribution to the contemporary-art extravaganza which will be held at 13 venues in the Kerala port city for three months nonstop.

Their drawings done on a biennale card will be on display at one of the venues hosting the show, organisers of India’s maiden biennale said in a statement yesterday.

The project, involving 23 schools in West Kochi and Ernakulam, has been initiated as an educational outreach programme being held as part of the biennale to encourage the artistic bend of the new generation.

The first step towards accomplishing the task began last month when the organisers sent to some schools the biennale postcards that had its one side blank for students, from class VII and above, to sketch and colour any image they wished.

Thus, artist Kajal Charankattu and her team visited 23 schools, and gave the students a 45-minute PowerPoint presentation on their endeavour.

“With the help of slides, we told them the world history of biennale starting from Italy’s Venice in 1895 to the specialties about the upcoming edition in their city,” Kajal, a native of Cherthala in Alappuzha district, said. “We subsequently entrusted each school with a set of biennale postcards.”

The organisers did not specify that the students attending their briefing should be proficient in drawing. “They could be anybody.... maybe ones involved in other arts such as music, dance, theatre,” said cartoonist Bonny Thomas, research co-ordinator for the biennale.

The students then did their paintings on the cards and the schools are currently sending back the works of art in packs. One such school is the St Joseph’s School at Chullikkal near Fort Kochi. “So overwhelming is the response that several of our students, who couldn’t get to paint, are eager to make it to the biennale,” says Tony Ettezhath, a teacher.

The organisers plan to give the cards to visitors at the biennale. “We will initially display them at a special venue,” Riyas Komu, co-curator and secretary with the Kochi Biennale Foundation said. “We can sense the thrill of the students. They are our future prospects in art.”