Bangalore :

Constructing Life, a digital artwork by Shibu Arakkal, son of noted artist Yusuf Arakkal, has won first prize at the prestigious Florence Biennale.

Based in Bangalore, Shibu said the event saw the participation of 475 artists under the categories of painting, sculpture, art on paper, video art, digital art, photography and installations. “Although, I applied under the photography category, the international panel of jurists awarded me under digital art due to the technique execution of my work”, he said. Shibu received the Lorenzo il Magnifico gold prize in digital art for 2013.

“Since none of us was told about the nominations, the winners were in for a pleasant surprise at the ceremony on December 8. My work measures 8 feet x 6 feet, comprising 12 panels. It’s a digital photo giclee print on canvas,” Shibu explained. The awards were presented by brothers Pasquale Celona  and Piero Celona, president and vice-president of the Biennale.

Describing the artwork, he said: “Our daily lives and quality of life are not only signified by the physical buildings we inhabit but also speak about our tastes, culture and sophistication. One of our most serious endeavours in life is to create one such dwelling to exist and flourish in. Sophisticated and design-minded buildings are visually very different from the hard and weather-beaten appearances of the people who construct these structures. And yet there is such character in their form and faces! It is these ideas that have taken root in my mind to create portraits of the construction worker in a series that will question our ideas of what ‘interesting’ is.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Bangalore / by G S Kumar, TNN / December 17th, 2013