Thonga, Community Art Project [Govindpuri(J.J. Colony) , New Delhi, 2017]

 Thonga, Community Art Project [Govindpuri(J.J. Colony), New Delhi, 2017]

( Sharad Das, Khadokar Ohida, Dhrubajit  Sarma)

Tracing Art in Public (TAP) is an online-based magazine aiming to address the lack of art in the cities and force a dialogue about art outside the museum. To celebrate its commencement, the organization planned to create a large-scale work inside a residential colony in south Delhi. Their focus was to co-create an evolving work with the residence of the community and work with community engagement.

Tracing Art in Public’ (TAP) invited some young Artists to participate in that community-based art project in south Delhi. Govindpuri(J.J. Colony) is an urban village or slum, based in South Delhi, mainly populated by the migrated Bengali and Bihari laborers, where I collaborated with some Indian artists in that project. We decided to work with the beauty of the residence of that community as a part of the initial plan. For that, we started taking photographs in that slum with the help of some local volunteers while we found some young curious people. So next we decided to organize three days ‘Thonga’ (Recycled Paper Carry Bag) making Workshop at ‘Kantha Community Centre’ with that printed photograph. The aim of the workshop is not only to guide the people to earn this skill but also to encourage them in artistic approach. Finally, we made an installation with 500 printed Thonga, displayed in an open ground at Govindpuri Slum area for the community's engagement.