Their mission: Blending forms of art with rural life

Vandana Shukla

Tribune News Service

Ladog, April 29

The rugged landscape of Morni Hills evokes nothing but a few unwanted encounters with monkeys and furtive lovers. Therefore, to hold a multi-disciplinary artists’ residency in a remote village, to be approached after travelling a 23-km stretch of almost kutcha road, sounds like a crazy idea. But then the community of artists has never been glorified for its great pragmatism.

The Healing Hills Art Residency (from April 28 to May 2) at Ladog village in the Badisher area has attracted artists from various corners of the world. The age group of artists varies from 28 to 78 at various levels of professional and artistic maturity, yet they thrive on similar creative impulses.

Harpreet Singh, a self-proclaimed ‘wanderer’, who taught and practised art in four continents, decided to bridge the gap between high art and art, as conceived and produced by the common man in what he calls a “jugadu” art residency. “Jugadu” because it all began with passion without any blueprint to bring practitioners of diverse genres of art at one platform for an inter-disciplinary dialogue and the rest began to fall into place. Now, a roof gallery, artists’ studios, a small theatre under a 300-year-old Peepal tree close to the river, are in the offing.

After the Kasauli Art Centre, founded in 1976 by artist Vivan Sundaram, which stopped holding residency programmes since 1984, the region has not endorsed any art residency to support the young art graduates who come out of the art colleges of the region. When Brydee Rood from Aukland, who has done numerous site specific installations to hammer at the need for elimination of plastic and promote eco-friendly waste management techniques, meets the villagers of Ladog, she learns about the rural practices of self-sustainability and explores the possibility of reflecting it through her next installation.

She meets Hari Om, a young artist from Delhi College of Art, at the residency. Hari is working towards making a museum for the fading arts and crafts of rural Haryana. Brydee’s art practice may help him evolve his project in an eco-friendly manner. The possibilities in art are as diverse and rich as the flora in the lush green valley of Badisher.

Senior sculptor Vipul Kumar and Ashok Das, a artist from Orissa, evolve a vision for the artists’ gallery.

By the end of the programme, a site-specific arts’ workshop will be held at Government Art Museum, Sector 10, Chandigarh, on May 3.