The magic of Raza

A nine day multi-arts festival in the Capital will celebrate the talent of all the Raza Foundation awardees till date.

The city is getting ready to witness a nine-day long multi-arts festival that will celebrate SH Raza as an artist. A Raza Foundation initiative to commemorate their 10th anniversary, the festival will showcase works and performances of Raza awardees who have been honoured in the last 10 years.

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Back in the year 2000, when Raza was in Paris, he felt the need to establish a foundation that can provide a platform to young emerging artists in India to showcase their work. Within a year, with the help of some like-minded people, such as, Ashok Vajpayee, ex Chairman, Lalit Kala Akademi, and, Arun Vadehra, director Vadehra Art Gallery, The Raza Foundation was established in 2001. “The Foundation was set up to encourage and honour younger artists,” says Raza. Talking about the festival, Vajpayee, now the executive trustee of the foundation, says, “The Foundation has completed a decade with these honours and we wanted to bring all the 39 awardees on one platform and celebrate their talent.” Raza adds, “I am delighted that so many Raza awardees are being featured in this multi-arts festival.”

Titled, Aviraam, the festival is spread over three major categories - a visual art exhibition of 17 artists, a poetry evening representing seven poets, and acts by 11 musicians and dancers that will span a week. “Aviraam means ‘without a stop’, which goes well with Raza’s foundation,” says Vajpayee. “The awardees represent art and art forms of this generation, which is interesting, as these forms are very new and refreshing,” adds Vajpayee.

The exhibition will preview at Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, on February 13. “The exhibition has two art pieces per artists. They represent different forms of abstraction,” says Vajpayee.

The poetry evening is another attraction at the festival. Scheduled to take place at the Visual Arts Gallery on February 15, the poetry-reading session will see some well-known poets from Indian literature reading their poems. Also, on February 17, all the performing artists and awardees will put up a show. To be held at Meghdoot Theatre, Copernicus Marg, this section will see dance acts by Gopika Verma, Malavika Sarukkai, Preeti Patel and Prerana Shrimali. The musical performances will feature Bahauddin Dagar, Uday Bhawalkar, Satyasheel Despande and more.

Schedule:

AVIRAAM

Raza Foundation Awardees Festival

13 February 2012 – 21st February 2012

Exhibition at Visual Art Gallery

Atul Dodiya

Jayashree Chakravarty

Manish Pushkale

Akhilesh

Seema Ghurraiya

Avadesh Yadav

Rm Pallaniappan

Smriti Dixit

Sanju Jain

S Harshvardhan

Rahim Mirza

Yusuf

Vanita Gupta

Sheetal Gattani

Saba Hasan

Sujata Bajaj

Yogendra Tripathi

AVIRAAM

Performing Arts

Meghdoot Theatre, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi

Dance

Ms. Gopika Verma

6:00pm

Ms. Surupa Sen

6:00pm

Ms. Malavika Sarukkai

6:30pm

Mrs. Sujata Mohapatra

6:30pm

Mrs. Preeti Patel

6:30pm

Ms. Prerana Shrimali

6:30pm

17 February

Mohiniattam

17 February

Odissi

18 February

Bharatnatyam

19 February

Odissi

20 February

Manipuri

21 February

Kathak

Music

Mr. Bahauddin Dagar

6:00pm

Ms. Manjiri Asnare

6:30pm

Mr. Uday Bhawalkar

6:30pm

Mr. Satyasheel Despande

6:30pm

Mr. Kaivalya Kumar

17 February

Rudraveena

18 February

Vocal

19 February

Dhrupad

20 February

Vocal

21 February

Vocal

6:30pm

Poetry Reading

15 February 2012 at Visual Art Gallery 6pm

Udayan Vajpeyi

Teji Grover

Anamika

Savita Singh

Ranjit Hoskote

Yatindra Mishra

Nilim Kumar