Vishwanath E

Vishwanath E is a visual artist. He has completed Post Diploma in Painting from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal. With this grant, Vishwanath plans to engage sixth and seventh grade students from the Government Higher Primary School at Dodda Thimmayyana Palya (DT Palya) village in Tumakuru district in a series of literary and visual arts activities to explore the local history, geography, arts and science associated with the town Madhugiri in Tumakuru district. 
The major attraction of Madhugiri apart from the monolith that it is famous for, is the fort atop it. This is well known for its architecture and stone carving which was built by the ‘Palegaar’ - Raja Heera Gowda, a chieftain of the Vijayanagara kingdom in 1678. Hyder Ali further added arches and granaries around the structure. 

Keeping in mind the historical contexts and the location of the school, Vishwanath’s project will engage students in skill development workshops in different formats for painting, drawing, murals, storytelling, illustration, and documenting the social, cultural and artistic life of Madhugiri. This is implemented in multiple stages, with schedules of once or twice a week. He has planned to take students on site visits to the Madhugiri fort and encourage them to make visual sketches of it. As an extension to this work, he will invite writers to conduct workshops to guide students in creative writing for a publication. Inviting field experts and revealing locally available resources, Vishwanath will create discussion platforms in the school. With these activities Vishwanath hopes to develop creative abilities among the students.

 An exhibition and a publication of creative writings of the students will be the outcomes of the project. The deliverables from this project to IFA will be a copy of the publication, photographs and video documentation of the project. 

This grant was made possible with support from Citi India. 

This Grant was amicably cancelled based on reasons mutually agreed upon by the Grantee and IFA due to unavoidable circumstances.