Bhubaneswar: A five day community art project at Bhopatur in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh which saw participation of 11 artists from Odisha ended Monday.
The community art project was a joint effort by a city-based art organisation called Sasatwa Foundation and Azamgarh-based organisation Rekha Smriti Trust.
Both the organisations, Rekha Smriti Trust and Sasatwa Foundation, work towards rural development and creating self employment opportunities for women and children by providing employment opportunities to them in the fields of art, craft and designing.
It may be mentioned here that Project Pankhi is the brainchild of founder of Rekha Smruti Trust Jaya Gaur.
One of the participant in the event said, “Gaur always wanted to do something for the village community, especially for the women to make them self dependent.”
The project has thus been led by Odia artists Satyabhama Majhi and Sidharth Mohanty and since then it is being organised by Gaur at her village Bhopatpur in the district of Azamgarh.
“Through this project we aim at creating employment opportunities for women for their sustainability and self-dependence,” Sidharth Mohanty said.
Not only artists from the state participated in the art project, it also saw participation from several artists from Nagpur and Mumbai.
In this week-long event, the artists involve the village women and kids to create wall art based on their rural culture. The women are assisted by the invited artists.
The various artists invited in this programme were Aditi Bhattad from Nagpur , Biswajit Sahani, Julius Das, Kalyani Uday from Mumbai , Nirod Nalini Behera, Nityananda Ojha, Pinaki Mohanty, Pratap Chandra Jena, Priyadarsini Mohanty, Saroj Kumar Rout, Satyabhama Majhi, Sibdas Sengupta and Sidharth Mohanty.