GO Team

A Camoes-CLP webinar on “Art & Culture Across Borders” is lined up with Miguel Barros (Calgary, Canada) and Deviprasad Rao (Zurich, Switzerland), moderated by Janeita Sudan, on Saturday, July 25, 2020, at 19.30 IST on CLP-Camões Goa You Tube channel. In this interaction both personalities will be sharing their experience in finding creative ways to connect with people – especially in our current challenging times of social isolation (courtesy Covid-19 pandemic).
Miguel Barros who was born in Lisbon in 1962 holds dual citizenship, Portuguese and Angolan. In 2014 he moved from Luanda in Angola in Africa to Calgary, Alberta, Canada where he currently lives. He holds a degree in interior architecture and design from IADE (Lisbon) and has designed china for Vista Alegre, after winning the National Design Award in Portugal in 1984. From 1987 till 1999 Miguel worked in an institution with the goal of helping drug addicts recover from their addiction. He was in charge of painting drawing atelier where he combined his artistic and human relation skills to create programs to help in the recovery of participants. It was during this period that Miguel imagination was inspired by India and he made several long trips to India spending there long periods of time on each of his trips. This is when the East became a recurrent theme in his paintings. The African experience in Angola is also very close to his family roots and it created a new cycle in his professional career, again becoming a significant presence in his paintings.
Miguel Barros’ works are in several public and private collections in several countries around the world including Portugal, Angola, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, United States, India, Lebanon and Mozambique, Australia.
Coming to Deviprasad Rao, he is a Switzerland-based artist and his art journey began 15 years ago when he quit his corporate job and escaped into a world of art. Rebelling against conformist ideas of composition and structure, he created a language all his own to articulate his world the way he saw it. If one observes keenly, it can be said that action painting is the mother of his visual language and eventually with time, Devi’s art evolved with more space and line chemistry to the stage it is today. The most distinct part of his paintings is the record of scribbling which flows without his conscious control. The final work is always viewed as the destination arrived by chance after a devotion filled journey. What results on the canvas is not a picture but an event or an experience.
Moderator of the webinar is Janeita Sudan who sees herself as global citizen and a humanist with passion for literature and the arts. Her critical writing has appeared in Art India, Indian Literature and other publications. She is presently working on a research project on the artist FN Souza. Do remember to join in this interesting webinar!