Kudla artist Santhosh Andrade wins 1st place in ORA 2020

Mangaluru has added yet another feather to its cap. City-based artist Santhosh D Andrade emerged as the winner in ‘ORA 2020,' the country’s biggest online art contest conducted by Mojarto.

He won the award for his painting titled ‘The Storytelling Wall: The Fallacies of Urbanization’. The prize comes with a certificate, a trophy and an award of Rs 3 lakh. Due to the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic, instead of the planned award ceremony, the prizes were announced online.

Artists were invited to submit their work under two categories: Emerging artist and professional artist.

Santhosh Andrade, whose art career spans 15 years, won the contest in the ‘Professional artist’ category from among over 1,000 contestants. There were several elimination stages in the contest. In the final round, names of the ten finalists were released. Apart from the first, second and third place, seven special mentions were announced.

In the concept note for his prize-winning entry, Santhosh Andrade explains that his painting depicts the fallacies of urbanisation.

“Memories of my childhood comprise of picturesque scenes of Mangaluru tiled roof tops amidst vegetable gardens and fruit orchards atop a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea along the west coast of India,” he wrote in the concept note, “Today however, as I look out my window reminiscing the past, I am awakened by the harsh realities of our cities. India today faces unprecedented growth which has led to what experts may term as urbanisation. What only affected Metropolis’ in the past, today has also reached many tier two cities in our country, like mine. My painting depicts the juxtaposition between these two facets in time. The foreground of the Mangaluru tiles roofs represent the scenes of yore almost being suffocated and engulfed by high rise buildings coming up right beside them. The staircase represents man’s desire to build and go higher and higher with no intention of stopping – depicted here as a circular staircase winding into the skies above the pitched rooftops with no landing in sight!” he noted.

The eminent judges for the contest were artists Arpana Caur, Brinda Miller, R M Palaniappan, sculptor Latika Katt, art historian Mitchell S Crites and Priya Pall, Curatorial Director of Bikaner House.