Sunshine Art House: A bold step towards making art accessible to the masses in India

CHENNAI: The cohesion of art extends past simply being that which is depicted on print medium. Art as it stands has already evolved past simple depiction mediums by the 1920s in the larger art world, and yet, in India, it has sort of stagnated, being treated as something still tied to its historic roots as entertained by kings and the richer class, never having reached the nature of being a medium of the masses.

Jonathan Faust, founder and creative head of The Sunshine House wishes to change this. This time on, he brings Sunshine Art House, an art show that matters.

“Art is of every medium, through installations, and performance art, to display art, to several mediums such as fabric art, comic-zine art, and queer representation art, and that is what we wish to put forward through the event,” John says.

There will be five installations, two live art performances, two dance performances, four singers, as well as artworks on display, along with interactive artworks. He adds, “We have fabric artists, a few queer artists, an animator, an artisan who makes her own clothes from scratch, right from the plants, to the dyes created for them, to the clothes stitched on loom, and that is just a few of them. This is an art show in its fullest aspect.”

The team is also working with several entities with their own artistic background in the city on this event, such as Chennai Photo Biennale, Madras Inherited, Madras Busking, Out of the Box, and a few more contemporary entities.

John tries to establish an art gallery through this initiative.

“Traditionally, art galleries have been organised by institutions, or art gallery curators who have set up events on their own over the years. But now, we would like to hold our own event, ideally at Lalit Kala Akademi, where all the artworks will be contemporary works put forward by our artists, collaborating with a few more artists across India to organise a truly contemporary art show that doesn’t focus just on “reputation”, but actual artistic quality and uniqueness,” he explains.

Sunshine Art House is taking place today, between 11 am to 8 pm, at The Antispot, Anna Nagar.