The Purushottam Public Trust Scholarships
SCHOLARSHIPS
As an important form of Contemporary and Modern Art, Graphic Printmaking is unique and exhaustive, expensive and laborious to practice. The Purushottam Annual Merit Award for Printmaking encourages artists to continue this art form through monetary support as well as offering a platform for them to showcase their work. We hope to play a small role by helping talented budding artists, especially print-makers. The core objective is to provide initial momentum to a deserving artist as he/she leaves the cocooned existence of a university and embarks on a professional journey.
One of the main initiatives of the Trust is, therefore, to offer scholarships to new talent in the filed of print making, and we offer scholarships and a platform for exposure to them.
In alignment with this, every year, since 2014, the Purushottam Public Trust has awarded an annual merit award to a student in the field of print-making.
This is executed under the aegis of the Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts and the Head of the Department of Graphics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat - the premier institution of contemporary Indian art in the country. This annual merit award is conferred on the student securing highest marks in the final examinations of the Graphic Arts Course (Practical). The awardee receives a monetary award of Rupees One Lac, as well as the opportunity to showcase his/her works at the end of the year at a premier art gallery in Vadodara.
The Purshottam Public Trust awarded its Annual Merit Scholarship for the year 2020 to Arpan Suadhukhan
Born in 1996, Kolkata, Arpan Sadhukhan did his BFA in graphic printmaking from the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship in 2018 and completed his MVA in Graphic from the Faculty of the Fina Arts Maharaja Sayajirao University in 2020.
Hi has participated in a number of group shows and festivals, including the Embark IV by Ark Foundation for the Arts 2023, Behala Art Fest 2023, and more.
He was also awarded the National Scholarship 2018-19 from the Ministry of Culture India (CCRT.)
"I’m working with the idea of consumerism and how it affects our identity. In the era of objects and beings becoming products, how do we react to the objects? And how do we discover their true identity?
So, I prefer to focus on this confusing selflessness, where we are not ourselves but a consumer and all our emotions are controlled and covered under the flames of consumerism.
Technically I prefer to use nontoxic mediums like collagraph & woodcuts more for my practice. And my context always pushes me to create vibrant colour prints to subvert the pop taste of it. I enjoy handling large sized prints, also it allows me to play with unbound possibilities and become the strength of my language.
In the case of Indian printmaking practice, I have noticed Collagraphy as a medium is not being taken seriously. So, we are not aware of the outstanding possibilities of the medium. In today’s world when almost all printmakers have tried to understand the shifting toward non-toxic printmaking, collagraph there stands with a glorious individuality. I recognized that character and started experimenting with it during my bachelor’s days.
Personally, I’m deeply moved by poetry and dystopian frictions. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Nabarun Bhattacharya, Subimal Mishra and Günter Grass are my favorite writers."
Click HERE to download his resume.
