Moving Worlds online exhibition of teaching fellowship 2019-20

New Delhi: Artreach India and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, in partnership with TARA Homes, Delhi, present artworks made by 18 young people who participated in the year-long Teaching Fellowship programme.
 
Moving Worlds’ young artists are: Noorjahan, Kamaljeet, Sharwan, Manoj, Raj, Vishal, Vanshika, Noorie, Sikander, Shyamu, Rashid, Lokesh, Nandini, Sachin, Sameer, Piyush, Roshni, Jyoti, from TARA Girls and TARA Boys Homes.
 
The exhibition includes expressive charcoal drawings, vibrant collage still-life works, captivating stop-motion animations, clay-relief tiles, reflective self-portraits and detailed nature observation drawings. Since the beginning of March 2020, regular workshops were led online, due to the lockdown; the drawings, paintings and zines made during this period are a valuable component of this online exhibition.
 
The title of the exhibition is inspired by workshops that reflected on the future, posing questions to participants of what they imagine becoming, what the world might be like and where they feel they’d find themselves at, twenty years from now. The group also felt this title aptly fits the many transitions they are experiencing and learning about from across geographies, today, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
About the Teaching Fellowship
 
Artreach India initiated the Teaching Fellowship programme in 2015 with the aim to be an intensive foundation art course for young people in care. The participants are exposed to a variety of mediums, techniques, styles and art histories. The programme encourages young people to use art as a tool to critically explore the world, to cultivate their imaginative, creative and reflective skills, and to find an individual expressive voice.
 
Artreach India monitors the impact of each Fellowship carefully and produces a short film at its completion. The Teaching Fellow produces a detailed reflection document which contributes to the organization’s larger goal of creating a knowledge base of informal art education.
 
Teaching Fellowship 2019-20 in partnership with TARA Homes
 
Artreach India’s fifth Teaching Fellowship with TARA Homes was conceptualised and led by visual artist Tahsin Akhtar. Eighteen participants between the ages 11 to 17 were selected by TARA Homes based on interest and aptitude. Over the course of the programme, from July 2019 to May 2020, Tahsin held weekend workshops on observation drawing, collage, still life, making flip-books, character design, clay modelling, animation and nature studies. During the lockdown, workshops over ZOOM inspired students to create introspective portraits, and paintings inspired by the world’s greatest artists.
 
The group had a curated walk through and workshop at the India Art Fair in February 2020 where they witnessed a wide variety of multi-media art from around the world.
 
The Teaching Fellow was guided by a distinguished panel of artist educators and curators: Atul Bhalla, Kristine Michael, Susanta Mandal, Vandana Kothari, Deeksha Nath, Anni Kumari, Sonam Chaturvedi, Megha Madan and Akansha Rastogi. This fellowship programme is made possible by the generous support of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, we are very thankful to their team.
 
What people have to say
 
“Inspiring appreciation and engagement with the arts, conceptualising and organising platforms and programs for innovative art education in India is the most important mandate of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Over the years we have been running numerous programs for school children, teachers and educators. For us funding the Artreach Teaching Fellowship is to extend our support for art education at grassroot level. It is also to support experimentation and development of informal ways of art learning, what classroom structured education at times fails to do.” - Roobina Karode, Director, KNMA
 
“Our hope with the Teaching Fellowship is that young people’s eyes and minds are opened to new ways of seeing themselves and the world around them and that they find confidence, support and direction to pursue their artistic journeys, whatever they might be.” - Charty Dugdale, Founder, Artreach India
 
“Participants are much more expressive. They don't want to just do beautiful painting. Earlier teachers used to tell them exactly what to do and they did it. But now they think on their own. Usually they don’t want to talk about themselves but now are expressing their vulnerable side through all these different mediums. “ - Hasina Khan, TARA Homes coordinator
 
“It has been a part of my life which made us do what we never found in ourselves before. I have learnt how to draw, paint on a4 size sheet, use charcoal, make cartoons by clay and do sketching.” - Programme participant