Media Release
Mangaluru, Sep 27: The City has added yet another feather in its cap. Mangaluru-based artist Santhosh D Andrade has emerged as the first winner in ‘ORA 2020’, the country’s biggest online art contest conducted by Mojarto, a venture of NDTV. He won the award for his painting titled ‘The Storytelling Wall: The Fallacies of Urbanization’. The prize comes with a certificate, a trophy and a purse of Rs 3 lac. Due to the constraints of Covid pandemic, instead of the planned glittering awards ceremony, the prizes were announced in an online event on September 25, 2020.
Artists were invited to submit their work under two categories: Emerging Artist and Professional Artist. Mangalurean Santhosh Andrade, whose art career spans 15 years, won the contest in the ‘Professional Artist’ category from among more than 1,000 contestants. There were several elimination stages in the contest. The final round released the names of the 10 finalists. Amongst them were the first, second and third winners in addition to seven special mentions.
In the concept note for his prize-winning entry, Santhosh Andrade explains that his painting depicts the fallacies of urbanization. “Memories of my childhood comprise of picturesque scenes of Mangaluru tiled rooftops amidst vegetable gardens and fruit orchards atop a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea along the West Coast of India,” he wrote in the concept note, “Today, however, as I look out my window reminiscing the past, I am awakened by the harsh realities of our cities. India today faces unprecedented growth which has led to what experts may term as urbanization. What only affected metropolis’ in the past, today has also reached many tier-two cities in our country, like mine. My painting depicts the juxtaposition between these two facets of time. The foreground of the Mangaluru tiles roofs represents the scenes of yore almost being suffocated and engulfed by high rise buildings coming up right beside them. The staircase represents man’s desire to build and go higher and higher with no intention of stopping – depicted here as a circular staircase winding into the skies above the pitched rooftops with no landing in sight."
The eminent judges for the contest were the artists Arpana Caur, Brinda Miller, R M Palaniappan, sculptor Latika Katt, art historian Mitchell S Crites and Priya Pall, curatorial director of Bikaner House.
Santhosh’s prize-winning painting will be put on display in famous galleries like Art Houz Chennai, Kalakriti Art Gallery Hyderabad and Kolkata Centre for Creativity.