An artist statement is a written document that summarises who you are and what your art is all about. As an artist, an artist statement can help introduce both you and your work to potential buyers, as well as to…

By preserving cultural assets, heritage management professionals enrich community life and enhance the nation’s appeal. Read on to discover how alumni from the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University are contributing to this transformative work. Protecting heritage and cultural assets…

From satisfying your mid night cravings to being your ticket into the kitchen, Maggi is something that plays a major role in life of every millenial. More so in the times of lockdown and isolation, bachelors and singles who cannot…

Locked down, alone and don’t know how to cook? Here are a few recipes to help you get started with cooking. There is a lot of population of young people in India who are staying alone, away from their native…

Here’s a glimpse into some positive steps that were taken or are being taken towards understanding the LGBTQIA+ community in the field of arts & culture. If we trace mainstream art through the years, we are bound to find heteronormativity…

BOUND is one-of-its-kind organisations that organised its fourth writer’s retreat in Goa this August. We chatted with the founder, Tara Khandelwal, who has been bringing mentorship opportunities for emerging writers in India. To be a good writer isn’t easy, to…

It was the eve of the Indian Independence Day and I was on this season’s first visit to San Francisco. And unwittingly I discovered these two icons of the Indian mythology and the Indian freedom struggle at the first and…

Based on which country you live in, the year can be divided into 4 or 6 or even 24 seasons! Let’s crack the seasons’ maths! Here’s a riddle for you: What numbers four in the West, six in India and…

Team CY ventures out to receive feedback from the creative community of Ahmedabad, with the purpose to gauge the acceptance and efficacy of it’s work as a hyper-local culture media. Has CY really added value in augmenting the demand for…

Dreaming of enjoying delicacies during the kite-flying festival? Did you know that different parts of India have their own unique regional specialities? Find out what the best of these are. January 14th is celebrated across various parts of India as…

In 2018, the Indian classical music community lost many great artistes. CY remembers the contributions of some of these stalwarts like Annapurna Devi, Pt. Brij Bhushan Kabra and Pt. D K Katar. Looking back on 2018, we remember a slew…

Do art shows sell? Is there a ‘gallery culture’ in the city? Are Amdavadi artists optimistic or discouraged? Does the city support art? As Ahmedabad witnesses a rising number of art events, we investigate these questions through interviews with experts…

With the recent popularity of superhero movies, let’s go back to the days when we didn’t need a movie full of VFX to feed our imaginations when our dearest friends were our comic books. Remember the days before gadgets when we used to read comics? Not only did most of our…

8 young graduates from CEPT University are exploring new techniques of construction with local communities in remote places of India, by building schools and public places. When the Pritzker Prize was awarded to Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi this year, he…

In the journey of Kadia, an artist with over 4 decades of work behind him, we discover the essence of art – what it means to express one’s deepest feelings by combining mediums, to transform canvas into art. We bring…

Veteran press personality Mrinal Pande discusses why newspapers are destined to perish at the hand of ePapers, lending insight into the challenges faced by today’s media. A person of bold beliefs can be instantly recognised by her speech and expressions.…

Know how the 7000 crore cracker industry in India came to be so significant and what the effect of the Delhi ban on the people at Sivakasi is. People celebrate Diwali across the globe in myriad forms. While some believe…

Pioneers of the contemporary art scenario in Ahmedabad, the father-son duo of Anil and Manan Relia share intimate anecdotes about their art collection and vision for Archer Art Gallery, in an exclusive tête-à-tête with Creative Yatra. Entering the foyer of Archer…

With the third International Yoga Day – on June 21st– being round the corner, Creative Yatra discusses how modern day Yogis have popularised Yoga over the years. Know how the science came into existence and how different Yogis preached their unique…

मेरे प्रिय भारतीय फिल्म जगत के मित्रो,   मै आ गया हु ! मुझसे डरे नहीं, मै तो आपकी सुरक्षा केलिए ही आया हु ! कई लोग बोल रहे थे के सिनेमा पैसे कमाने का माध्यम है – शायद हो…

With the mercury rising and the hustle and bustle of the city refusing to diminish, plan an organic trip this summer to fill your soul with nature, farming and a taste of rustic life. Check out CY’s list of farm…

In the growing heritage awareness scenario of Ahmedabad, the Centre for Heritage Management has played a significant role in nourishing cultural forces that cultivate the legacy of the city. Management in Heritage April 18th, is celebrated across the world as…

In Amrut Tabiyar’s story, we discover the vastness and influence of Art in lives of people. It is an inspiring story of letting joy of creation unseat the harsh realities of life. Amrut Tabiyar is a Security Guard at GNLU…

20th March 2017 is World Sparrow Day, a day that brings to light how ethically appalling the near-extinction of these joyous creatures is. To know how we can make things positive for sparrows and the environment, Creative Yatra correspondent, Himanshu…

The art of celebrated Modernist Artist and founder member of Kanoria Centre for Arts, Piraji Sagara, is relived at Art 17 this March. Know about his life and creative journey through the words of his friends and family BV Doshi,…

Among the humorists in Gujarat who wrote/write for newspapers and magazines, Tarak Mehta (1929-2017) stood out with the visual and narrative qualities of his writing. He developed an eye for observation as he grew up and lived in the middleclass…

How two NID alumni are shattering menstruation myths and creating a period-positive culture Tuhin Paul was a student of engineering when he made a trip to the coastal city of Diu with his friends. One of the boys had injured…

In a world where people are busy trying to increase only their database of contacts, it is refreshing to meet and know someone who prides herself as a people collector. Entrepreneur and speaker Lakshmi Pratury, founder and CEO of INK,…

Confused about what the recent furor in Tamil Nadu is about? Here, we break it down for you. The first time I read about Jallilkattu, I thought of it as an Indian version of Spanish bullfighting, with matadors and red…

That she is a beautiful Indian classical vocalist, we know. That she is a crowd-puller and a leading one at that, we know too. But, not all of us know what goes in retaining that amazing voice or the focus…

‘Kaaippoccheee‘ a word that conquers terraces of India on January 14th each year. The modern India is now much nonpartisan in terms of festivity, thus Uttarayan/Makarsankranti finds celebrators across diverse corners of the nation, but why do we celebrate it? The only…

From religious paintings to calligraphy, psychedelic art, elaborate drawings to portraits of politicians, truck art has come a long way in the country. The truckers of India, consider their vehicle as a kaleidoscope that shows off quotes, colours, and detailed…

The Design Museum Dharavi (DMD as it is better known) defines itself as an innovative intellectual institute that commemorates the creative possibilities in Dharavi, an aboriginal locality situated in the spirits of Mumbai, India. In February 2016, it was inaugurated, a 3…

India a land of festivity with more than 1599 languages, 3000 castes, and 25,000 subcastes; the country has a variety of people blending with each other through various means. And the celebration of a festival is one of the most…

The New Medium of Cinema: Gender and Empathy As Seen at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival The seven-day visual feast at the Jio MAMI 18th Mumbai Film Festival came to a resounding close on 27th October. Over the days, a…

The Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum is now Open to Visitors and we can’t wait to walk in. Stroll down the Majestic Raisina Hill Residence of India’s First Citizen in probably the most entertaining lessons on History. Finally, the second phase at…

Indian films approach some hard topics, ranging from criminogenesis to human trafficking, through documentary-style films.   This year’s Mumbai Film Festival has brought together over 175 films from 54 countries for a seven-day gala that has been calling out to…

A place where traditional marries the contemporary and where nature flirts with concrete is one that is bound to hold attention. Perhaps opposites do attract. And, in a city like Udaipur, they meet to celebrate various unions. As I have…

For many people, the world of art might seem a bit queer and unapproachable – intimidating, even. To help bridge this communication gap, Ajay and Swati Piramal have thrown open the doors of their private art collection in Mumbai. A…

Imagine one fine morning you are leaving for your office and you are absolutely late for it. And with an enhancing cherry on the cake now your car is also almost out of gas, will it start? The same situation…

To be a student at Baroda’s MS University in the 60’s under the tutelage of stalwarts like KG Subramanyan and NS Bendre, meant that one was living in the midst of a major movement in the Indian art world –…

Shankar’s International Dolls Museum Showing the biggest accumulation of dolls from all through the world, the Shankar’s International Dolls Museum has two segments displaying more than 160 glass cases from New Zealand, India, Africa and Australia. The International Museum was…

Every year art enthusiasts gear up for a festival like no other – the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai. Earlier this year, the event held 600 programmes across 12 days and drew over 1.5 lakh people. The best thing…

There are very few classical musicians who have the conviction she has, of rendering a pure classical piece as systematically as one involving fusion. Sitarist Amita Dalal believes music should stir the mind as much as it must soothe the…

To many of us Rabindranath Tagore is a Nobel Laureate, poet, playwright, novelist, philosopher and a musician; very few of us know Rabindranath Tagore as the Artist – and one of National and International significance as far as the Pre-modern…

Google has launched an Art and Culture app for Android and a website. The platform covers different aspects of art and culture, history and wonders of the world and allows you to take virtual tours of famed sites, which will be best…

The Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group have shared a very special relationship with the city of Ahmedabad, giving widely to the nascent yet vibrant scene in the city and helping it grow as one of the strongest art precincts in the…

The elusive illustrator behind “Of Ink and Yellow Memories,” Neelakshi Rathore, talks about drawing as a means to remember, the benefits of keeping a sketchbook, and the inward versus outward worlds of a creative. Sketch of Mcleodganj, 2015 Most people…

If photographers today wish to cover an age-old festival popular in a remote village, all they need to do is google for details. Date, place, time, schedule, it’s all listed on the well-designed website. Camera bag and lens in order,…

Gujarat has had a very peculiar relationship with the arts, one that is based on curiosity, diversity and collective learning. The state altogether, since centuries now has developed its own aesthetic experience spanning visual arts, architecture and literature developing its…

Let’s face it. We know little about our architects, who mostly go un-applauded. It is quite alarming considering that India has such a diversely rich architectural tradition, one that has in many ways given to the contemporary architecture. Here’s CY…

Lets take a look at some of the most important pre and post Independence Women Poets from India. Male folks, as it was the norm in most part of the world largely dominated literature in India. History however along with the…

The Parsis said just as this sugar blends perfectly well in this cup of warm milk, so will we in the culture of your land. And well they did! Gujarat and Parsis have forged a friendship formed on love and respect, giving…

This all goes back to the formation of the two new states – Maharashtra and Gujarat and the two men who lead Indulal Yagnik and Acharya Atre. They were both leading the two movements ‘Maha Gujarat’ and ‘Samyukta Maharastra’ respectively.…

To Mani Da, With Love! Chapter 3 : The Writer   The river Ganga speaks: “Yet between the rocks and sea I laugh and live/ Rubbing the ribs of earth, holding the sky/ In the tiny mirrors of my glassy waves./ And in…

“A billion moons pass. A billion lunar years. Opening her eyes after a million light years, Draupadi, strangely enough, sees sky and moon. Slowly the bloodied nailheads shift from her brain. Trying to move, she feels her arms and legs…

  In a world that accuses the youth of being too full of themselves, of being emotionally distant or even an impulsive lot, it is refreshing to meet a 23-year-old who is keen to know others’ life-stories, is sensitive to…

Older than the oldest grandfather, The Himalayan range has always been mystical and homage to serenity. There is something about the mountains that is being able to turn people inwards. Attracting wanderlusts, sages and seekers since decades, its mesmerizing beauty can be deceiving…

Even though they were regional films, Satyajit Ray made powerful cinema. His oeuvre transcends boundaries – geographical, linguistic or otherwise. The women portrayed in his films were detailed and multifaceted in both rural and urban settings.  Let us look back…

In the year 1950, a 28-year-old man sailed across the Indian Ocean “to see the works of Cezanne” in Paris. As destiny would have it, Paris for him was ‘love at first sight’. He went to the opera, watched the…

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (formerly the Victoria and Albert Museum) The oldest museum in Mumbai, established under British colonial rule in 1855, the museum was renamed the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum in 1975 after the Indian…

Long gone are those days, when folk music was just a part of the traditional sects. We are witnessing an increasing number of Indie artists collaborating with Folk musicians and successfully weaving the ethnic sounds with their experimental renditions.  In…

A friend’s mother was mentioning Bharti Kher’s famous Indian elephant, to me. She described it in great detail on our way to a museum, in South Delhi. She elaborated, talking about this piece (that I had only seen in photographs…

It reminds one, of the crucial scene in Hirani’s Three idiots where Farhan essayed by the beautifully restrained Madhavan comes out to his family about his photography aspirations. It is tense. There is a brief pause before all hell breaks…

Chapter 1 : The Teacher Some people live for others to believe in themselves. KG Subramanyan or Mani Da, as he was fondly called was one such being. There was never a single high point to his career; his entire…

With the invention of the television, photography and the internet, our love of pictures has grown dramatically over the last century. While bibliophiles lament the resultant loss in reading habits today, a medium does exist that bridges this proverbial divide…

‘I don’t comprehend video art.’ These words have glued with most of us. So what is an artist’s film or video? Drawing, Painting and Sculpture have been our traditional mediums for understanding visual art. And People who are not well…

An educational institution that rises above schooling(as we know it today), competition and degrees, Gurukulam follows the ancient Jaina education system of India where knowledge, understanding habits, sensitivity and logic is still considered superior. The Gurukulas are Indian schools that still…

Yoga can bring transformation! The way we conduct our deeds, thoughts that we develop in mind, habits we infuse, and everything that that defines our existence can be transformed for betterment and wellbeing through Yoga.  Yoga, a 5000 year old…

“Art for art’s sake” is the famous translation of a French slogan that saw art as being an autonomous thing that has no other purpose or aim but to be for itself. Philosopher Alain de Botton argues, in the book…

Identifiable by its brightly painted red supporting frame, the new building for Manav Seva School perches atop roofs of existing houses in Shankar Bhuvan community in Ahmedabad. When the number of students coming to this school had begun to burgeon…

The ‘common’ makes for conversation, adaptation, adjustments – a constant barter of thoughts, devices and languages in a space of coexistence – the common is an evolving space. This is not to say that it is devoid of any sense…

There are theories, but no one knows when exactly this celebration started. Since thousands of decades every 4 years an extravaganza occurs, where men, women and children from varied culture and ethnicity come together to celebrate human history’s biggest social…

All our Grandmothers have that exclusive treasure chest, something where they keep their most prized possessions. A trunk they open only on special occasions, something which holds things most dear and precious to them. The opening of the chest is…

Once a worldly man, met a saint Both glanced at each other and laughed, And asked the same question, What have you done to yourself ? -Bharat Thakur When celebration goes above cast, creed, language and gender is actually where…

1 – Hosting the royal procession (Peshwai) of Naga Sadhu’s first dip in Kshipra River at Ramghat, The Greenwich of India. Kumbh is one of the largest congregation of humans on the planet. It takes place at an interval of…

Imagine tripping into Lewis Caroll’s ‘Wonderland’ and living it up like Alice in an overwhelming parallel universe. Well, good news is you don’t need to trip down a hole in your backyard but click play on Studio Oleomingus’s game Timruk, a vivid digital game world that…

What do we need to do to serve our purpose in this life? Relinquish our desires for sustenance? Lose ourselves in the daily clichés of what we know as the rat race? It might not be this grim; because with…

Who knew that a boy from Indore, will paint the History of Indian Art like Colossus. It was 1937 when M.F. Husain (Maqbool Fida Husain) came to Bombay for the first time. Dazzled, by the urban phenomenon. Bombay was possessed by modernism, institutions,…

Khwahish. Numaish. Farmaish. Wah. What a volley of beautiful velvety words cascading through someone’s rendering; it almost sounds like poetry. All of them carrying subtle nuances in their meaning, blend into a potpourri of a similar fragrance. Numaish is one…

While surfing through the list of movies from a friend’s hard disk I came across a folder that was named ‘Memories of March’. The name was interesting enough for me to copy the folder. Being the avid watcher of films…

It was not like every other day. I woke up late, maid didn’t turn up and car was punctured. Well, it didn’t end there. Later, I got stuck in a traffic jam. While cursing my luck and answering multiple calls…

“Only progressive literature can produce self-confidence. It will be disappointing if our writers don’t use their pen for the betterment of the common people, because if writers, journalists and thinkers turn away from present-day circumstances and write merely for personal…