Jaya He, a new museum of GVK, is currently hosting a unique exhibition of paintings, sculptures and objects created by Gond artists on level four of Terminal 2 of GVK-operated Chhatrapati Shivaji Inte
Jaya He, a new museum of GVK, is currently hosting a unique exhibition of paintings, sculptures and objects created by Gond artists on level four of Terminal 2 of GVK-operated Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA). Passengers flying to and from Mumbai can view and buy from a collection of more than six kinds of Gond artifacts.
The Gond paintings explore new surfaces such as pebbles, brass plates, wood boxes and fibre. There are ten metal cut-outs suspended from the ceiling 30 feet from the ground, which bring alive fantastical themes like flying creatures and vehicles. Bright hues lend a three-dimensional effect to what are essentially two-dimensional forms.
While a lecture was organised on Friday at Chhatrapati Shivaji Museum at Kala Ghoda, Yamini Telkar, head of museum at Jaya He, GVK New Museum, said, “At present, artifacts are available for sale only at the Jaya He, GVK New Museum Store but in due course, we will launch an e-commerce platform that will enable consumers from anywhere in the world, the general public, to purchase directly from the store. Our target is to present our ancient glory to the public.”
Explaining Gond art, collaborator Mukul Goyal told The Asian Age, “We did a few workshops with Gond artists from Madhya Pradesh. Firstly, they made some 35 designs on paper and later, we selected the best out of them in our studio, which is in Gurgaon. Thereafter, we started with the process of making paintings for almost a 20 metre area which took one and a half month. The whole process was about creating the art on paper and then translating it into 2D and 3D. This included a total 7 kg iron in making the artifacts and the artists who had been painting on paper till date were amazed about the fact that they had to now paint on iron.”
Subhash Vyam, who has created all the artifacts, is from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, and has been a Gond artist for the past ten years. He told this newspaper, “We were told to make artifacts related with aircraft so we drew chariots, flying elephants and other mythological things first, and later we were told to draw on metal which was very difficult for me, and it took at least a week for me and my six-member team to understand the type of color it needed. During this project, we worked on pebbles too for the first time,” he said.
