The Department of Fine Arts, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication, University of Hyderabad (UoH) organised the Final Display ‘22, exhibiting the works of their final year students, on the 4th and 5th of June 2022. The event was held from 10am to 8pm in the Department of Fine Arts building and was open to all students, faculty and members of the public.
The displays encompassed a variety of subjects, including climate change, agriculture, food politics, human identity, social media, sustainability, deforestation and caste politics. “Every artist has their own perspective. But overall, when we encapsulate the works, they seem to be leaning towards the same thing. Everything is connected to nature, technology, socio-political acts and the human thought process,” said Sasikanth, one of the artists whose works focused mainly on deforestation.
With this exhibition being the first to take place after a pandemic-induced break of two years, there was a lot of excitement and joy from the students and faculty of the department. “It feels great to be able to hold such an event again. The output this year has also been very different. I think a major factor for this is the online classes these students had to do in their first year. It brought about different kinds of engagement and conceptualisation,” said Prof. B V Suresh, Head of the Fine Arts Department, “For us faculty, it’s always a pleasure to see our students, after a lot of struggles and failures, finally come up with such wonderful, thought-provoking pieces.”
Sustainability was a major focus of the exhibition, with many of the artists using organic materials such as rice paper, handmade paper, cloth waste and plastic waste as their medium. “There are many paradoxical practices when we use materials. Sometimes it feels like a contrast between what we are showing and what we are showing it on,” said Ananthakrishnan, an artist whose works showcased the present situation of farmers in his native place of Alappuzha in Kerala. “So we are trying to change that by using as many organic materials as possible to create our pieces.”
The exhibition was visited by an unprecedented number of people and very well received by all. In fact, due to the high numbers and huge interest, the event was extended to the 6th of June 2022. “The hard work is evident in the displays. The exhibition itself has a very abstract feel to it. People can decipher different things from the pieces and I think that’s a wonderful thing about this exhibition,” said Abdullah, a student from the Department of Communication.
Contributed by Mr. Deepak P N, MA Communication (Media Practice)
About University of Hyderabad
The University of Hyderabad is an institute of post-graduate teaching and research. The school was established by an act of the Parliament of India in 1974 as a Central University. Over the years, it has emerged as a top ranking institute of higher education and research in India. The university also offers courses under distance learning programs. The university is a member of the ‘Association of Indian Universities’ (AIU), the ‘Association of Commonwealth Universities’ (ACU) and ‘International Council for Distance Education’. An Academic Staff College has been functioning on the university campus since 1988 under the UGC scheme for improving the standards of teaching in colleges and universities. The college organizes orientation and refresher courses for college and university teachers.
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