Artist Jacques Servières and Poet Madhu create a fusion of Sculpting, Painting and Poetry in Guwahati

On the evening of 13th April, Agora The Space and Poetry Couture came together to host 'Art Out of The Box' event featuring French illustrator-sculptor Jacques Servières and Poet Madhu Raghavendra.

The event began with a discussion around Jacques's initial work at The Sculpture Garden of Dhuys, along the river Marne, in France which has more than forty monumental sculptures, inspired by the amalgamation of ancient and the modern art across the world.

His work is phenomenal and transforms the idea of war to art. There are few examples in this world where art has so eloquently been raised from war-waste. 

The sculptures that he carved are stone ruins from the of the bridge-aqueduct of the Dhuys, which spanned the Marne and was bombed in 1939 by the Germans in World War II.

Jacques is in India as a part of his residency with Alliance Française. During his stay and travel in different parts of India he has tried to capture the throbbing city and country spaces, the nuances of daily life, and the transient culture of India. He spoke about his recent sketches  from Guwahati, Chandigarh and Kolkata. 

During the course of the conversation between Madhu and Jacques, Madhu paused at few of Jacques's sketches and read a poem that was in some way connected and brought out a similar idea in words. The idea was to create a cross country, cross art form jugalbandi between a French sculptor-illustrator and an Indian poet to showcase that in some way the ideas for art is somewhat similar although the manifestation of it can be extremely unique.  One of the poems Madhu read was Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert―

The night is a splinter to kill darkness

The rose is a maze to find the thorn

The man is a guest who sees no light

The woman is a sky who births the clouds

The body is a chair where hangs the coat

The brain is a scarf that strangles love

The kiss is an article of the constitution

The will is a fever that will bring rain

The craft is an illness that transmits light.

The event ended with question and answers from the participants and a vote of thanks from Agora The Space. One of the youngest participants Triveni Goswami, asked Jacques, about how much detail does he get into his work while sketching. He responded that he is an artist who likes to get the first impressions, light and darkness captured, and he was done. This helped him create more images as he travels across the world. His art resided in the present. 

Agora is one of the upcoming art hub in Guwahati run by Radhika, an art and culture facilitator with a background in social anthropology and theatre, and Kulanandini Mahanta, a cinematographer with work experience in India and America.