The month- long online national fine arts festival “WAHRAAT-2020” organized by Youth Affairs Wing, Department of Students Welfare, University of Kashmir (KU) concluded on Friday.
The competition was kept open for the students enrolled in Colleges and Universities across India.
The participants were asked to paint or draw on their own choice of topic. Art works like drawings, paintings, cartoons, comic art, folk art, and sketches were accepted online.
While appreciating the department for successfully conducting the month long competition, Vice Chancellor KU, Prof Talat Ahmad said mental health was of utmost importance especially during the pandemic and such competitions prove to be a powerful tool to deal with the stress of isolation and uncertainty particularly within the student population.
Prof Talat said idea of making the competition open and without any theme was really worth appreciation “as anyone can come up with their artwork with no constraints.”
He said keeping oneself occupied, spirited and competitive through such contests while sitting at home was a real therapy to maintain mental health.
Prof Raies A Qadri, Dean, Students Welfare, KU, in his remarks said painting or drawing in the perspective of an art therapy activities supports student’s resilience and empowerment through creating a safe ambiance for decision making and problem solving to help handling, navigate anxiety, and stabilize stress.
Prof Qadri said amidst the COVID19 crisis, social isolation has been an important measure to reduce its transmission. “Countries across the world have adopted it in order to protect the people. We in the University of Kashmir have been organizing such art related activities since April in order to provide healthy activity to the students to dispel and mitigate the depressive affects of fear and anxiety through these online activities and competitions like WAHRAAT which was open to students across India,” he said.
While providing details of the competition, Shahid Ali Khan, Cultural Officer, DSW, KU said hundreds of students from Colleges and Universities across the country have submitted their art works which would be forwarded to a panel of three expert artists to evaluate the performance of the participants and the best art works will be awarded with merit certificates whereas participation certificate will be given to all the participants.