Prutha Goa

‘Being an artist is not about a particular style or being from a particular place. It's simply about inspiration’ – Hesham Malik Hesham Malik is a well-travelled artist who was born in Bahrain and is now based in Prague, the Czech Republic. He has an intimate connection with Goa, in that his mother was born in Margao and his grandparents were from Cuncolim. A few months ago he was in Goa to show his collection Embellished at Carpe Diem. If one referred to Hesham as a global citizen, one would not be far from the truth. The man has lived in Bahrain, India and Dubai. He has travelled to Canada and received two bachelor’s degrees in that country, one each from the Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology and the University of Waterloo. Hesham has been to Greece, the UK, Tanzania, Kenya, Spain, Austria, Mauritius, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Germany and other countries he remembers and appreciates for their beauty. Needless to say, his life has been enriched with the exper

Photographer David de Souza belongs to a small group of intellectuals who dare to live life against the diktats of society and practice their chosen profession with a pervasive joy and freedom, teaching others to follow suit and dare to dream differently. He advocates the liberty to traverse different fields of occupation as he moved from the sciences to the arts: a phenomenon more prevalent in these modern times in India than it was in the past. David left formal schooling of nineteen years equipped as a biochemist, and the rebel that he is, he chose to walk the road not chosen by most by working in an adivasi village in Nasik with the non-profit organisation Maharashtra Prabodhan Seva Mandal. It was here that the realisation dawned that his education held no weight in the balance to experience and reality. And so began the process of casting pretentious knowledge to the wayside. After reading Roman Catholic priest and Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich’s surmise the disconnection betwe

Katharina Domscheit is a German curator and the founder and director of Peppina Art, with a Master of Arts in Arts Policy and Management from Birbeck, University of London. She has worked as an artist consultant and a gallery manager in England. In the first of her lectures in a series titled How Art Can Create Change: The Power of the Arts and Culture at the Kokum Design Centre, she expounded the idea of the arts and culture as a means to transform society in a progressive manner. The arts would comprise of dance, music, theatre, literature, visual arts and the combined arts. Culture is an amalgamation of the arts and the values, beliefs, traditions and ways of life of people. Art and culture together would be represented by architecture, news media, the World Wide Web, fashion, food, etc. A division of the arts can be traced with dance, music, mime, drama, films and literature being categorised as the performing arts. The visual arts consist of paintings, photography, installation ar

Your first meeting with Clarice Vaz will find you a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm this amazing human being exudes. Her exuberance comes across vibrantly through her vivid paintings, awash with a myriad of colours. As she begins to unfold her artistic journey before you, you realise there is the existence of a great deal of testing, out of which these wonderful paintings have evolved. Clarice excelled in academics but her empathic nature lead her to choose nursing over a more self-serving profession. After the birth of her sons, Clarice gave up nursing full-time and restricted her practice to the quaint village of Saligao where she lives. When her sons left to pursue further education she filled the vacuum with her childhood inclination to paint. In spite of having no training as an artist, Clarice possesses a mastery over her paints that can only come from deep conviction and her love for God. During her early days she produced paintings of the Last Supper, the Saligao church, p

British born Eleanor Viegas taught art appreciation and was a museum education officer before she decided to settle down permanently in Goa. Goa is the homeland of her deceased husband, Nuno Viegas, who was also her art teacher at the Birmingham College of Arts. Eleanor spends her time in Goa involved in the Banyan Tree Project. It is her innovative way of bringing together a community of women to salvage needlework as part of the traditional arts. She is passionate in her endeavour to impart values of living a good life to children through the Ubuntu method. Obtaining a master’s degree in textiles at art college was probably the most natural choice for Eleanor as she had begun to embroider at quite a young age and enjoyed dressing up in her teen years, taking a keen interest in designing her own clothes. She envisions great potential for embroidery and hails its value as a part of our heritage. ‘Working as an art teacher, I liked to use textiles with my students to help them to expres

Kaavi art is slowly going to become a note in history if it is not revived and promoted. This is the message Heta Pandit, heritage activist and author of books such as Houses of Goa (co-authored with architect Annabel Mascarenhas) and Dust and Other Short Stories from Goa , geared up to send across to the audience gathered at Gallery Gitanjali, Panaji. Ms Pandit says, ‘I first saw kaavi at the Deshprabhu house in 1998. I was on a Homi Bhabha Fellowship and I went to the Deshprabhu house…It fascinated me then and it fascinates me now.’ A unique art form that originated in Goa, kaavi was Goa’s gift to Maharashtra and Karnataka. This art form possesses the wisdom of ages in that it has survived the rigours of weather, time and other deleterious factors. Showing the audience a visual description of an ordinary Goan house (the Boraskar house in Poinguinim), Ms Pandit explained that while some houses will have external embellishments of decoration on windows, the dogs, lions, soldiers seen

Himalayan Insights was India’s foremost photographer Raghu Rai’s contribution to Goa Photo 2015, an annual international photography festival. A collection of photographs selected from work done over the years; captured shots of the Dalai Lama and places such as Ladakh and Gangotri, made a startling impact on the viewer in their black and white avatar. Impressive in their depth, the photographs were lent an aura of poignancy by the lack of rainbow hues. ‘Images should have their own strength about them. They should be able to stand on their own. Some of them were in colour, but colour is pretty and predictable. Too many photographs appear as picture postcards with colour,’ says Mr Rai, explaining why the entire collection was in black and white. Photo taken from Gallery Gitanjali Facebook page . Raghu Rai qualified as a civil engineer but took up photography in 1965, going on to take up his first job as a photojournalist at The Statesman the very next year. He left his employment as c

Anushya Sharma is one of those artists who become completely inseparable from their work. It seems as though her spirit infuses every painting with a signature of her self. She hails from Guwahati, Assam, and was an assistant director in films in Mumbai before the call of art proved too strong to ignore. Her first collection, called Miss A Takes a Holiday , was a success and prodded her to continue in this line. Fool Fantasy , her most recent exhibition of paintings, shown at the Art Chamber, Calangute, takes us on a journey of life, discovery of self and the trials in the process. A certain amount of angst is married with a sense of this peeling away of layers of questions. This says much for the value of the journey being greater than the final result. The series of painting begins with the subconscious motivation to make a change. ‘The fool is basically this very youthful, optimistic spirit about discovering the world, exploring new places, new experiences; not necessarily aware of

Eccentric scholars do not abound in Goa and most recently she lost one of her most enigmatic sons. Tenacious in his pursuit of refined scholarship, José Pereira formed the fourth member of an intellectual group (Mario Miranda, Alban Couto and Eusebio Rodrigues) that had sworn to resurrect intellectual endeavours so dominant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but perhaps hindered by the censorship imposed by Portuguese dictator, Salazar. He passed away after completing 84 years of age, on the 26th of January in the USA. Though a native of Curtorim, Goa, José Pereira was born in Mumbai and spent much of his life outside the realm of his ancestry. His literary contribution is vast, amounting to 145 articles and 24 books. His knowledge spanned a range of subjects, including theology, architecture, literature and ethnomusicology. Some of his books are Hindu Theology and Golden Goa’s Art . José Pereira’s illustrious academic career began with an honours degree in Sanskrit from Sidda