Suresh Pillai - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Suresh Kumar Pillai is an interdisciplinary artist working at intersection of arts, archaeology, cultural artefacts, and museums to locate material history and empirical knowledge among living cultures. His community museum initiatives reflect ideas, desires and practical approaches to regenerate knowledge, skills and traditions embedded in the physical history to create sustainable living models in real locations by communities. His exhibitions brought together a multitude of practitioners to explore tangible and intangible evidences of heritage and created ideas, objects, spaces and works. Using a variety of themes drawn from chronological time line of written and oral history, he has organised several public exhibitions as a step towards building community museums. The first attempt was made in 2004 at an archaeological site of ancient port city of Arikamedu or Poduke, near South Indian city of Pondicherry. Using a variety of materials including original artefacts an exhibition, “Indo Roman cultural exchange from 100 BC to 100 AD” was organised with the active involvement of local communities, authorities, artists and scholars This exhibition made the history of ancient port of Arikamedu widely known to a large audience. http://arikamedu.blogspot.in/A permanent exhibition on Oceanic Culture of India, was executed in 2009 in a 200 year of historic Old Light House in Puducherry attracted wide acclaim not only for its role in saving the heritage monument from collapse but also converted the neglected public building as exhibition galleries and also made access to the watch tower for people to experience the sea. The permanent exhibition at the Old Light House was part of the three international cultural meets he has organised on Indian cultural Diaspora for the Indira Gandhi National centre for the arts ( IGNCA), an autonomous cultural organisation of the government of India, as the head and founder of Diaspora Resource Center (DRC). The resource centre facilitated the visits of the artists, writers, scholars, musicians to India for interactions and performances. In 2007, an exhibition UTSA or Origins, visually narrated movement of culture from India to the world from Vedic times to now different time zones. The focal accent was on the culture of Indian Diaspora born out of indentured labour migration in 19th century AD. http://ignca.nic.in/diaspora\_2009.htmThe Diaspora Resource Centre, in 2008, organised an exhibition on Roma (Gypsy) and their historical ancestral cultural roots which is still the only attempt so far in India on this subject. The seminars, dances, plays, film screenings and music performances by artists from India and abroad further explored the roots of Roma (Gypsies) to India.Before turning to become a practitioner of Community Museums, he had a long career in print and electronic media. His documentary films such as Jahaji Bhai, Songs of Malabarise look at the process of migration and emergence of Indian communities in English and French Caribbean. His film Purano Manush, was based on the experiences of Roma (Gypsies) in Serbia Kosovo. These films look at the retention of culture among these communities through remembering their ancestral relation with India. He has several publications and credited with many fellowships from various Universalities. He worked with National Academy of Arts, Ministry of Culture, Government of India in New Delhi as Senior Consultant to develop their Musuem projects. Currently he lives in Catskill, New York doing sustainable growing of food . Please visit www.atinafoods.com.

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