The new edition of Abir India’s First Take 2023 brings an extent to Young Art practitioners in India. The open call Abir India First Take 2023 got immense reception from the young artistic community across India. Abir is working on to selects 100 works of Art from the submitted entries. To do that, the Jury team go through the entire submissions. One hundred artworks out of more than 2000 entries and Ten best Artworks from 100 for ‘Best Awards’ is challenging.  

The selection process will end soon, and the declaration of Awardees will follow, and the show will bring this artwork and art lovers together in the vibrant city of Ahmedabad. Vasudha Thozhur is an Artist who is part of Abir India’s First Intake 2023 and offers her expertise to this grant selection process. 

Early Life, Works and Art 

Vasudha Thozhur is an interdisciplinary artist, mainly focused on Painting in watercolour and oil, and she was a professor at the Department of Art and Performing Art at Shiv Nadar University, Noida.

Vasudha was Born in Mysore and studied Painting at the College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai and the School of Art and Design in Croydon, UK. Between 1981-97, Vasudha lived and worked in Madras; 1997-2013, she lived and worked in Vadodara. In 2013 Vasusha started to associate with Siva Nadar University. She has also cooperated with Himmat, an activist community established in Vatva, Ahmedabad, which functions with the survivors of the Gujarat Riots.

Vasudha received a research grant from Central Lalit Kala Academy in 1988; in 1989, she received the Ministry of Culture Fellowship for Artists. She won French Government Scholarship and The Charles Wallace Grant in 1996.

Documenting Massacre

Vasudha’s collaboration with ‘the Himmat brings new insights into Gujarat Riot; they closely work with riot survivors and victims, especially in Naroda Patiya, a project titled ‘Beyond Pain – An Afterlife encapsulates the painful memory of a riot. In this project, Vasusha inquires about collective trauma and the massacre’s effects on the survivors’ lives.

Vasudha gathered her drawings and paintings depicting daily life in a conflicted contemporary society named ‘Secret Life’ that contained paintings and drawings from 1997 to 2001. she builds a narrative through compositions depicting rooms in a household, each following the idea of home and image and how they are created together and merged.

Apart from the art practice and shows worldwide, Vasudha found the time for teaching and was involved in lectures/teaching/workshops as visiting faculty at MSU, Baroda, NID in Ahmedabad, and IICD, Jaipur.

Vasudha Thozur reinvented human nature through her art practice. In ‘Four Ways of Reconstructing Pain’ is large-size artwork that brings ‘humans’ into the perception and asks the genuine questions of reconstructing pain. What is pain, and how can we reconstruct pain? Where we miss the pain of life, and artists bring back this pain into abstract physique.