Six-day literary, art & craft festival concludes at Amar Mahal Museum

Artists presenting a traditional dance during six-day festival at Amar Mahal Museum, Jammu.
Artists presenting a traditional dance during six-day festival at Amar Mahal Museum, Jammu.

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Feb 22: Six day festival of Literature, Arts, Crafts, Traditional/Classical and Contemporary Performing Arts concluded here today at Amar Mahal Museum with the mesmerizing classical vocal recital by Mukteshi Sharma.
Jointly organized by Dara Shikoh Centre and Amar Mahal Musuem in association with Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, and University of Jammu, this mega cultural event entitled ‘Celebrating Jammu-Jashn-e-Baharan’ featured over 200 artists, writers, poets, scholars, performers, designers, sculptors, painters, crafts people and photographers.
Conceptualized by Dr Jyotsana Singh, Director Amar Mahal Musuem, this festival offered a unique opportunity of inter-disciplinary creative encounters amongst varied artistic streams and expressions. The festival ‘Celebrating Jammu-Jashn-e-Baharan’ opened with two major workshops one each for writers/poets and visual artists. Interesting and praiseworthy feature of this unique cultural festival was that it had the participation from all the regions of J&K state.
A day-long seminar entitled ‘Defining Jammu: Celebrating Diversities, Facing Challenges’ featured top scholars and thinkers of the State. Prominent among them who deliberated in the seminar included Rekha Chowdhary, Vijya Thakur, AK Merchant, Sandeep Singh, Khwaja Iftekhar Ahmed, Sheikh Shakeel, Shiban Koul, Nissar Rahi, Masood Choudhary, Javed Rahi, CM Seth, Lalit Gupta and Meesha Bhagat.
In traditional performing arts, Geetru by Khajoor Singh and Party from Basholi, Bhakh singing by Asha Kesar and Party from Jammu, Kud Dance by Krishan Singh and Party and a captivating theatrical presentation entitled ‘Parvaaz’ written and directed by Neeraj Kant were the highlights of this mega event.
As a part of the artists workshop, a 35 feet long painting ‘The River’ was also created by the young artists from all the three regions of the State. Prominent painter Suman Gupta was the mentor of the Painting workshop. The mentors of creative writing workshops included Lalit Magotra, Vijay Thakur, Naseem Shifaie and Tadzen Jolden.
The festival also had the participation of two special invitees which include AK Merchant and Khawaja Iftikhar Ahmed. In photography section, an exhibition of photographs on the fading architectural heritage of Jammu by Sunny Dua also featured.
A befitting culmination of the festival was celebrated with the soulful singing by Mukteshi Sharma who was brilliantly accompanied by Ashutosh Sharma on Harmonium, Neeraj Verma on Tabla and Rakesh Anand on Flute.

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