STUDENTS’ BIENNALE 2018 | THE EXPANDED EDUCATION PROGRAMME

CITY AS ARTIST’S STUDIO
BY SANATHANAN THAMOTHARAMPILLAI

CHENNAI | 17 – 23 OCTOBER 2018 

Participating colleges: College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai, Government College of Fine Arts, Kumbakkonam; and Bharathiyar Palkalai Koodam, Pondicherry

City as Artist’s Studio was developed as a series of intense conversations with the students from the art colleges of Chennai, Pondicherry and Kumbakkonam, about the need for an informed and critical ‘art practice’ that grows beyond the act of making art. The workshop unpacked the city of Chennai and its ‘other side’ to the students through a series of ‘Memory Works’, or walks around the city with local scholars, artists, and activists, thus enabling the students to re-engage with questions of gender, caste, history, memory and the archive in relation to their own practice.

This workshop was developed by Sanathanan Thamotharampillai, the Jaffna-based artist, art educator, and co-founder of the Sri Lanka Archive of Contemporary Art, Architecture, and Design (SLAAD). He is a Senior Lecturer in Art History, Department of Fine Arts, Jaffna University, and was an advisor on Sri Lanka's national curriculum for teaching art in schools.