The Camels of Genghis Khan

While passing through Ulaanbataar (UB), I had seen a strange sculpture with a row of camels standing in a tiny park in the middle of the road. I wanted to look at them properly and photograph them. However, it was a busy crossing, always full of traffic and clicking a picture of those camels from a moving car was impossible. So one afternoon I decided to walk and search for those camels.

This post is about my walk through the city, searching for those camels in Ulaanbataar (UB), the capital of Mongolia.

Mongolian Hero Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan is the national hero of Mongolia. His statues adorn some of the famous landmarks of the country like the central square of UB in front of the national parliament. They can also be seen in some unlikely places like his giant face designed on the side of a hill overlooking the city. Genghis Khan had led his caravans to conquer the world.

Mongolia is the land of nomadic people with their animals including horses, sheep, goats and camels – in fact Mongolia has 10 times more animals/cattle compared to its human population. So those camels could have been a representation of a Mongolian nomad. Thus, those sculptures could be a representation of the great Khan or of a Mongolian nomad.

Old wall-paintings & The Motorbike Guy

This time, I am staying at Shangri-La hotel on Embassy road in UB. I came out of the hotel and started my walk by going towards left, to the Children’s Palace, while across the road I could see Bayangol hotel, which is one of the historical hotels of UB.

I have been to Mongolia many times for work related to a disability programme. During my first visit to Mongolia in early 1990s, I had stayed in the Bayangol hotel. At that time UB was a completely different city, as Mongolia was just coming out of decades of a communist regime under the Soviet influence. Hardly anyone spoke English, while many persons spoke Russian. There were only a few buildings in this part of UB at that time while the road was narrow and there was no traffic except for a rare car.

This whole area is now completely transformed, full of sky-scrappers. The much wider road is jam-packed with cars. In the nearby Sukhbataar square there is the new parliament building. It is a beautiful place today with wonderful ambience and colourful buildings.

As I started my walk on Embassy road, I saw some beautiful old wall-paintings along the road. Their colours had faded but I could still make out their designs, which seemed to be telling some Buddhist story regarding the killing of some demon. I hope that these can be rennovated.

My first stop was the metallic sculpture of the Motorbike Man, which looks straight out of the Mad Max films, with an alien guy driving an amazing alien looking motorbike. I loved this sculpture placed just outside the Children's Palace. It seems to be the work of an artist called Mr. Santo, born in Thailand, who uses chains, springs, rods, ball bearings, brake bands, gears, and lots of other recycled metal to create art.

Park Place City Marker

I turned left on Chinggis Road (another way of saying Genghis), which is a broad road with never-ending traffic. My next stop was to admire the metallic city-marker of Park Place, showing the distances from UB to major cities of the world, including London, Sydney, Moscow and Beijing.

I have seen similar distance markers in many cities but this was the first time to see a metallic sculpture made for this purpose.

Peace Bridge

Going further south along the Chinggis Road I reached the Peace Bridge which passes above Dund-Gol river and Narnii Road, the bypass road of UB made for avoiding the traffic of the city centre.

The Peace Bridge was built with Chinese help in 1963 and was renovated in 2012. Dund-Gol is a small river, which joins Tuul river to the south of UB. From the Peace Bridge, I could see little water in Dund Gol (literally ‘Middle River’). Fortunately, it seemed relatively free of the trash which such places usually seem to get due to neglect.

The Blue Horses and the Summer Fountain

After crossing the bridge I reached the area around the National Sports Stadium of UB, which is full of shopping areas, restaurants and other modern buildings. In front of the square facing the Nadaam Mall, there was an open space with two beautiful blue horses, made in plastic or some synthetic materials. After the Motorbike Man and Park Place City Distances indicator and these horses, I was really impressed by the quality of public art in UB. It was also good to see that local youth had not tried to deface these art works by writing on them, which is a common problem in most urban places.

The fountains next to the horses, erupted with water suddenly and in unpredictable ways. Children playing between those fountains, were having a lot of fun as it was a warm day and many of them were soaking wet. As usually happens in such situations, a couple of adolescent boys had picked another boy and forced-carried him above one of the erupting fountains, accompanied with a lot of shouting and merry-making. Families sitting around looked at them with tolerant bemusement.

Children's Park

Next to the Nadaam Mall is the only pedestrian crossing bridge over Chenggis road. With so much traffic on this road, it was a safe way for me to cross the road. On the other side, the bridge led to a children's park full of statues of zebras, deer, eagles and tigers, where families were children were visiting. It is almost like a zoo, the only difference was that instead of live animals, it has statues.

It also had a nice fountain with the Blue coloured sculpture of a woman wearing traditional Mongolian dress.

Behind the park, I saw an old building which had a mosaic of a Soviet style of wall-art from the pre-1990s period (in the image below). Most of such buildings are slowly being replaced by new constructions. I wish someone would photograph and keep a record of all such wall-arts as these represent the city history.

Genghis Khan Camel Caravan

Finally, I reached the Camel sculptures in the traffic island marking the point where the north-to-south going Chenggis road meets the east-to-west going Chenggis avenue, which goes towards the international airport. The metal sculptures are called the "Silk Road Complex monument" and are the works of an artist called Dalkh-Ochir.

In 2015 a competition was held to identify sculptures for UB and in that competition 15 sculptures were selected. These have been placed in different parts of UB, including the motorbike man mentioned above.

In the Silk Road sculptures, initially there was only one statue of a Bactrian camel. Now there are 9 Bactrian camels, one dog and a bearded man on a horse, who may represent Genghis Khan or perhaps a Mongolian nomad. According to the GoGo website, "Initially the camel monument complex was named Migration and the idea of camels facing towards the city center has a meaning of inflow of wealth."

I am glad that I had decided to make this walk to look for those camels. They looked absolutely amazing. The sculptures are huge and made with a metallic sheet, and thus can hopefully withstand the harsh Mongolian winter.

I spent some time walking around the sculptures and clicking pictures while the amused locals, waiting for the bus at the bus-stand across the road looked at me.

To Conclude

Just after the Silk Road monument complex crossing, there was the Palace and Museum of Bogd Khan, who was the first king of Mongolia after its independence from China in early twentieth century. However, I was too tired by this time and decided to leave visiting that to another day.

It was a very satisfying walk. It took me a couple of hours, but that was because I was stopping every where to look around and click pictures. If you are in a hurry, you can do it faster. The image below shows another Soviet-era wall-art from a building near the Silk Road complex crossing. I am fascinated by the history hidden in these wall-arts.

UB has some wonderful examples of good quality public art. Though I have been to UB many times, I am not much acquainted with the town except for the area around Gandam monastery. I am glad that this time I could explore a new part of the city.

*****

#mongoliaub #ubmongolia #ulaanbaatar #publicart #genghiskhan

Cities of Art & Colour

This post is about cities that have decided to use art and colours to give a specific character to their residential areas and at the same time, improve quality of lives of its residents and have more visitors.

In this post I have chosen 3 cities from Italy (Dozza, Caorle and Burano), 1 city from Greece (Mykonos), 2 cities from India (Lodhi Colony/Delhi and Fort Kochi) and 1 city from USA (Santa Fe/New Mexico) - as cities that have made an interesting use of colours and art in the city life. Let me start with Santa Fe.

Santa Fe – USA

Santa Fe in New Mexico is a beautiful city with some amazing museums. With its typical houses built with adobe, you can breathe art in its air. The reason why I have included it in this post is because of a place called Canyon street, which is less than 1 mile long and has about 100 art galleries and artists’ studios.

Here, you can see open air installations, sculptures, paintings, and all kinds of artistic expressions in all the possible styles, from modern and post-modern to abstract, figurative, conceptual, material, western and traditional Amerindian.

Apart from Canyon street, even the city centre has some wonderful art galleries. If you go out in the surroundings, you can discover other artists’ studios and art galleries. We had an amazing time in a small village called Truchas, where the owner of the Hand Arts gallery, William A. Franke, accompanied us in a discovery of the works of some local artists like William Maxon.

Yet, every time I think of Santa Fe, I remember the afternoon spent walking from one art gallery to another on the Canyon Street, feeling drunk with the beauty of all the different art works.

Fort Kochi – India

Fort Kochi is a small island connected to Kochi-Ernakulam towns on the mainland in Kerala in south of India. Centre of the spice trade with communities from different parts of India settling here since ancient times, from 17th to 20th century, this place was under Dutch, Portuguese and British rules. Thus, the tiny and densely populated island is dotted with streets and buildings that show a mixing of traditional with the different colonial influences. With the decline in its importance as a trading centre, many of the old colonial buildings are abandoned, leading to a characteristic ambience where memories, nostalgia and decay intermingle with lush tropical greens and blue of the sea.

For past couple of decades, Fort Kochi was one of the haunts of the European tourists, who came to stay here in the old houses converted into simple bed-n-breakfast places. In 2012, the first art biennale was held here. In the past 6-7 years, the Biennale has transformed the sleepy island, as every two years, for 3 months, many of its old buildings and abandoned warehouses are taken over as sites of art installations.

I have visited the art biennale in Kochi twice and every time I come back with amazing memories of some great art works that have an extra dimension to them because they are scattered among the decaying and abandoned old buildings and warehouses.

In Fort Kochi, the sea, the lush vegetation, the memories, the history and the nostalgia, are all one with the art. However, its success may lead to its undoing. As Fort Kochi attracts more visitors, the old colonial houses are being replaced by multi-story concrete buildings.

Earlier this year, I was sad to see many changes - the old vegetarian restaurant near the bus stand replaced by a swanky juice and burger joint, the quaint place where I had stayed a few years ago now had a new multi-story building and the bus service which connected Fort Kochi to Munnar had been cancelled. I am keeping my fingers crossed but to be honest, I am worried that soon much of the central part of old Fort Kochi will be gone forever.

Mykonos, Greece

Mykonos in the Aegean Sea off the Greek coast is the second island in my list. It is also the only one where the dominant colour is white, which gives its characteristic ambience.

This island was already a holiday destination in the pre-second World war period. However, it became famous as a tourist hotspot of the rich and famous in 1960-70s. Traditionally, the houses here were always painted white to protect them from the harsh sunlight.

The white houses of Mykonos with their blue window shutters and church domes make for a striking effect.

Burano, Italy

Burano is the third and last island on my list – actually it is a group of 4 interconnected islands, part of Venice town in the north-east of Italy. It was famous for its delicate crocheted lace.

Burano is also famous for its houses painted in all the colours of the rainbow. Its narrow venetian streets, reflected in the waters of the canals, make for incredibly picturesque views.

While looking for the history of Burano, I found that its houses have been painted like this in different colours since old times. The place is magical and if you are visiting Venice, do not miss visiting Burano.

Caorle – Italy

From the islands, now we move to the seaside. The tiny town of Caorle, north of Venice, also has brightly painted colourful houses just like Burano, but that is not why I have included it in my list.

Its link to the art is in boulders that line part of its seaside. Every year, the city invites some sculptors to carve a sculpture on a boulder (image below).

In this way, a walk on the path close to the boulders, becomes an opportunity to admire open-air sculptures of artists from around the world.

The last two cities in this list are examples of urban street art projects.

Lodhi Colony, Delhi, India

Lodhi Colony is a residential area in central Delhi, close to some urban land marks that are well known to the tourists including the Lodhi Gardens, India Habitat Centre and Safdarjung tomb. Using the walls of this residential colony to make street art by well known artists from around the world started in 2014.

The third edition of Lodhi Street Art festival, during which artists from India and other countries were invited to make new street art was completed recently in 2019.

I feel that the beautiful colours and the different artistic styles have transformed this drab and monotonous looking area into something more vibrant and joyful. Walking around the streets of Lodhi Colony, you can see an open-air art exhibition.

Let me share a local secret - if you are visiting the Lodhi Street Art project, keep your eyes open for the street vendor next to a park in Block 10. It is usually crowded with visitors – this is Chidambaram’s Dosa place, one of the best places in Delhi to get south Indian food. There is no place to sit and it may not look very impressive, but the food will have you licking your fingers and it costs little.

Dozza – Italy

The tiny medieval town of Dozza located on a hill, not very far from Bologna in northern Italy, was one of the first towns to use street art to bring visitors. After the second world war, young persons from small towns had started migrating to the nearby bigger cities and medieval towns were often left with elderly persons. In the 1970s, the town decided to invite every year a few artists from Italy and other countries to come and paint on the houses of the old walled city.

Dozza has a little medieval castle and is surrounded by gently rolling hills covered with vineyards. This is the area of San Giovese wines. Visitors coming to the see the painted town can also visit the castle, buy local wines and perhaps eat at one of the characteristic restaurants.

While Dozza is beautiful, its limitation is that the old walled city is small and almost all its houses are already covered with paintings. Unless the paintings keep on renovating, I guess local persons from surrounding areas may not come here frequently. Fortunately, the smaller towns located around big cities have had a renaissance – young people who had migrated to bigger cities, are coming back because of higher quality of life in smaller towns.

Conclusions

I hope that you have had as much fun reading about the cities of colour and art as I had in writing this post. It gave me an opportunity to think back to some travels, go through old pictures and relive the joys of those journeys.

I believe that as countries around the world reduce poverty and develop, and the coming 4th industrial revolution based on artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies and biotechnologies takes off, increasingly we are going to look at places which offer better quality of life – less pollution, historical roots, natural beauty and cultural opportunities. Cities which choose colours and art, add an extra dimension of joy to our lives.

As the cities I have chosen for this post show, it is not enough to have one innovative idea, but you need to nurture it and keep on innovating. At the same time, when tourists do come, we need to make sure that the essential characteristics and heritage of our cities are not destroyed because of commercial greed.

*****

#urbanrenewal #citiesofcolour #citiesofart #usa #italy #greece #india #kochibiennale #dozzaitaly #santafeusa #mykonosgreece #lodhicolonystreetart

Thought Is Also Matter - Raju Sutar

At the Kochi Biennale 2018-19 in India, I had a chance encounter with the Pune-based artist Raju Sutar, curator of one of the collateral exhibitions. We talked a little while we sat together to have a coffee.

I always love talking to artists of different kinds, especially when they are persons who think about their art and are aware of their own motivations and ideas about what it means for them. In that sense, talking to Raju was immensely satisfying.

The Theme of Raju’s Exhibition

Raju had curated the exhibition on the theme of “Thought is Also Matter”, which probed the distinction between conceptual art versus material art and concluded that the distinction is arbitrary, since concepts (thoughts) have material consequences in our brains.

I have been to a couple of Biennales in Kochi as well as, once to the Venice Biennale. While visiting the art installations in these events, looking at some of the conceptual art, often I asked myself about the boundaries between art and life, or between an artist and an art appreciator.

A lot of us, including me, we can appreciate art in daily life – from the way nature expresses itself, to casual juxtapositions of colours, forms and ideas in spaces, to the way cobwebs and discarded materials may express concepts. However, my doubt is - Is just appreciating that art-concept in the daily life and putting it together as an art installation, enough to make us an artist?

I think that there can be some extremes of such so called “art-installations” where the artist has conceptualized an art-expression from daily life, to hide his/her laziness and is using creativity to cheat. For example, look at the image below presenting the work “Melting Pot” by the artist Prabhavati Meppayil, which has rubble from a broken wall or a house as an installation. When I saw it in Kochi Biennale 2016-17, I thought that rubble can be artistic and it can have deeper significance of what it says about life, death, time and memories. Yet, an installation like it blurs the boundaries between an artist and appreciating art in daily life, and it probably illustrates my point about lazy artist.

Different forms of Art

I think of art biennales as events celebrating different kinds of visual arts. Finding video and sound installations in the biennales is another area of confusion for me. How is a video installation different from a video shown in a film festival?

One of the deepest emotional experiences for me in this year’s Kochi Biennale was the video and sound installation by the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat called Turbulent with two singers on two screens, one male and one female, on the two sides of a room. Yet, I wondered, how was this different from a film shown in a film festival? Does it mean that different art forms – dance, sculptures, films, singing, can be mixed and presented in all kinds of festivals? That thinking of different art forms and expecting to see specific things in an exhibition is old-fashioned? Isn't that taking and stretching the basic idea of "everything can be art" a bit too far, not in real life, but in organising art festivals?

Thought is Also Matter

Sorry for wandering off in different directions - let me get back to my discussion with Raju.

He explained that the idea of this exhibition came from the works of the American neuroscientist Candace Beebe Pert who had discovered the opiate receptor in the brain which binds the endorphins and who proved that thoughts result in chemical changes in the brain and thus turn into matter.

“Neuropeptide is a chemical protein. In reality it’s a piece of matter. And the mind-blowing truth is that it’s a new little piece of universe that didn’t exist just moments before”, he explained.

The exhibition “Thought is also matter” presents the works of a collective of artists from Pune, most of whom had been part of another exhibition called “Roots/Routes” curated by Raju in Kochi Biennale 2016-17. He said that once he had the theme of the exhibition, he talked with the other artists and together started reflections on how this idea can be expressed in different ways.

Apart from Raju’s own works, the other artists in this exhibition were Hrishikesh Pawar, Rajesh Kulkarni, Sandip Sonawale and Vaishali Oak. Let me share some information regarding their works.

Raju Sutar

Raju had paintings on huge canvases covering the whole wall. About these works he said, “Time is made of past, present and future. The past is in the memory and the future is in the imagination. ‘Now’ is present and in a moment, it becomes the past. This ‘now’ is the result of the past and it will shape the future. In fact, now, past and future are all together in one. I am trying to paint large canvasses in a kind of action painting way, as an action is now and not a moment of thought … by avoiding the movement of thought I am trying to look at the possibility of mutation to happen in the moment of ‘now’.”

Hrishikesh Pawar

Hrishikesh is a dancer and his installation called “I Travel/I/Arrive/Not” (ITIAN) brought together performance art (dance) with video and a sculpture of threads with beads. He is trained in kathak and contemporary dance, and has done many national and international performances. In 2007 he set up the Centre of Contemporary Dance in Pune.

The dancers in his installation asked the question, “Where do thoughts begin and end?” through an abstract rhythmic poetry of sounds, gestures and forms. The installation included live performances but they were not there on the morning when I visited it.

Rajesh Kulkarni

Rajesh’s installation had terracotta pots in different forms linked together by threads, ropes and steel wires, connected together in a kind of a galaxy. He works with clay and lives in a village, where he has an ancestral home, and where he runs “Aakar Pot Art”.

The ideas behind his installation was explained as: “thought that travels with speed, that has the fickleness of the present and at the same time, a strong flowing reality. Present that annihilates the moment it creates itself … the moment the present becomes past the energy that thought beholds transforms into enigmatic undiscovered form. The very abstract thought bunches and gathers together, packed in tiny particles, joining with multi-layered wired structures, electrifying, dynamic, flowing back and forth …”

Sandip Sonawale

Sandip is an artist and also runs a printing press. For this exhibition, he expressed himself through colours and basic forms such as circles and triangles.

By breaking down the art into the basic forms, he was “breaking down the thoughts in a similar way. The thoughts are complex in nature, we try to break them down to make sense …”

Vaishali Oak

Vaishali had 4 works in the exhibition, all made from fabric assemblage which expressed the idea of “Seed Post”. She works with fabrics, joins pieces together, layering them, and creating textures. She has been honoured by the National Academy Award from Lalit Kala Academy.

She looked at the ‘thought’ as a ‘seed’: “A seed is responsible for the future – future of trees, vegetation, life and the entire planet. A seed is also a possibility, ultimate and unlimited possibility … seeds of thoughts are invisible, one can witness it when a thought comes into action and becomes matter.”

Discussions with Raju Sutar

Apart from the installations in the exhibition, we also talked about some other issues related to art and artists in India. Raju teaches art and yet he said that he did not believe in formally trained artists and is open to persons who take up art because they have a passion for it.

I was a little surprised, so he explained, “Hardly any students come to study art because they are passionate about it. Most students in art college are there because they did not get admission in any other college. You can see in the class that they have no real interest in it.”

I could understand his point but I felt that he was too harsh. It may be true for most students in an art college, that they did not get admission in other more prestigious colleges/courses. Yet, in the end, they chose an art college, so perhaps they did have some interest in the subject.

He also felt that Kochi biennale is the biggest and most significant art movement in post-independence India. He was critical towards the ‘latest art fad’, that of the Conceptual art. He felt that sometimes it was all about concept and ignored the canvas, while for an artist, the canvas has to be important. He told me about a discussion he had many years ago with the well-known artist, M.F. Hussein saheb, “He said that these fads are iconic entertainment.”

In a way, the exhibition he has curated ‘Thoughts are also matter’ is an expression of his dissent with the way conceptual art is being used. “Today there is great insistence on concepts and everything else is looked down and is considered of less importance. I was thinking about the origin of the idea of conceptual art, and challenging it in different ways. I was interested in finding what is not a thought.”

Conclusions

The visit to exhibition “Thought is also matter” was very interesting because of my chance encounter with Raju Sutar and because of our discussions, which gave me a glimpse into the different ideas that were there as a foundation and which were developed in different ways by the artists.

Due to my own confusions about the boundaries of art and concepts, I found an echo of my thoughts in Raju's ideas about conceptual art.

*****

#conceptart #kochibiennale #rajusuttar #indianartists #artinindia #fortkochi #kerala #keralaindia 

Hassan Sharif's art of the useless objects

Before looking at Hassan Sharif's art installations in the Venice Biennale (Italy) last year, I did not know the name of any modern artist from the Arab world. In my mind, Arabic artists were associated with things like calligraphy, flowers and geometric designs, thus I was surprised by his works. This post is about some of the art installations of Hassan Sharif at the Venice Biennale.

Hassan Sharif

Sharif was born in UAE in 1951 and he died in 2016 at the age of 65 years.

He did his art school training in the UK in the 1980s. There, he came in contact with Tam Giles and his ideas of abstract and experimental art, which influenced him. He lived in Dubai where he helped to set up different spaces to promote and support young and upcoming artists of UAE.

Hassan Sharif's art of assemblage

Sharif is known for taking ordinary objects of daily living and assembling them together in big heaps to create his art installations.

His art is seen as a criticism of the prevalent shopping culture, where we need to continuously buy more things, which are then quickly discarded to contribute to the ever-increasing mountains of garbage in our cities.

I think that his art can also be seen as a commentary on the human relationships in today's world, which follow a similar and parallel trajectory to those of the consumer products, where we look for quick emotional highs. Yet we quickly tire of them and discard them, finding it easier to hide behind our smart phones and head-phones.

Sharif's art at Venice Biennale

At the 2017 Biennale, different works of Sharif from different time periods starting from mid-1980s, were brought together to give an overview of his main artistic ideas. This exhibition was called "Supermarket" and included mixed materials such as textiles, papers, iron hardware, books and boxes.

Some of Sharif's installations like the one below with iron hinges and pieces of clothes, look like scraps that you may find in an old dusty store room in your house, yet they express emotions. I felt that they were a reminder to open our eyes and really look at our surroundings instead of sleep-walking through our daily lives - to see the juxtapositions of materials, shapes and colours.

Conclusions

Today, it is not always easy to define art and to understand its boundaries. It is not about artistic skills and mastery, rather it is a way of looking at the world and rediscovering emotions and feelings. Sharif's art is such. For example, look at the assemblage of old files tied together in the image below, which can be a common sight in old Government offices. Sharif makes you look at them in a new way by appreciating their textures and forms.

I want to conclude this post with my personal favourites among all the "assemblages" of Hassan Sharif presented at the Venice Biennale - it has a heap of steel spoons, forks and black plastic tubes. I am not sure if it was because of the bent and misshapen spoons and forks, but it was the installation which evoked the strongest feelings in me.

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Beautiful sculptures of gymnastics and yoga

I love sculptures and art in public spaces. Many countries put up statues of famous persons in the city squares and gardens. However, sculptures of persons doing gymnastics, athletics, sports and yoga are not very common. In this post I want to share some images of sculptures related to sports and yoga.

To introduce this theme, the sculpture below shows the Olympics banner being carried by the athletes. This sculpture is located near the Ouchy port on the lake in Lausanne (Switzerland) at the entrance to the Olympics park which hosts the offices of international Olympics committee.

Bologna (Italy): Let me start with two sculptures from Bologna, where I have lived for many years.

The first sculpture is by Italian sculptor Leonardo Lucchi, who is known for his airy and light looking art. He achieves this effect by showing them in motion, so that only a tiny part of their bodies is touching the ground. In this sculpture he has a teenage boy balancing on a pole, with his arms raised up. He looks ready to make a jump.

The second sculpture is by the Serbian artist Biljana Petrovic. It has a man sitting with his knees bent, his feet touching, his hands extended clasped tightly in a yoga pose with his rippling muscles straining with the effort.

Delhi (India):  India does not have many good public sculptures except for those of political figures. However, over the recent years, some good sculptures have been put up in the airports. The next image from Terminal 3 of the Delhi airport showing the 12 asanas of yoga exercise known as Surya Namaskar is one example of these sculptures. The sculptures are by Indian sculptor from Jaipur, Nikhil Bhandari.

Geneva (Switzerland): This beautiful sculpture of a gymnast with a ribbon is part of 5 bronze Olympian sculptures by British sculptor Eleanore Cardozo. It is placed in front of the Palais Wilson building, which hosted the League of Nations, before it became the United Nations and shifted to New York. Palais Wilson building now hosts the Human Rights commission of the UN.

Kozhikode (India):  Manancheri park in Kozhikode (old name, Calicut) has many sculptures. Most of these are poorly made and poorly maintained. They are also very clearly inspired by socialist art of 1960s and 1970s. However, one of the sculptures of an acrobatic boy with his legs playfully raised up in the air, transmits the joy of life, similar to the Shirshasana yoga exercise. A similar statue is also placed in Panjim (Goa), close to ferry port. I was unable to find out the name of its sculptor. This sculpture is by K. S. Radhakrishnan (information provided by Deepa Gopal Sunil).

Lausanne (Switzerland):  The Olympics park in Lausanne, already mentioned above, is full of sculptures about different sports. Two of its sculptures are presented here.

The first sculpture is by the Hungarian artist Gabor Mihaly. It has a group of 3 cyclists on two bicycles and a total of five wheels, which together represent the 5 circles on the Olympics flag.

The second sculpture is by the famous British and Australian sculptor John Robinson. It has a gymnast girl on a beam. It represents the well known Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci who had received a perfect 10 out of 10 score for her gymnastics in the Montreal Olympics in 1976 and had won 5 gold medals.

Manchestor (UK): The next image is from a public art exhibition in the First street in Manchestor, showing female figures in different colours who seemed to be doing yoga or acrobatics. These sculptures were created by the Colin Spofforth studio of sculpture and design.

New York (USA):  The sculpture from the central park in New York is by Milton Hebald. It represents Prospero and Miranda from the Shakespeare's play 'The Tempest'. Probably, this sculpture does not strictly fit in the criteria of this post. However, when I saw this sculpture, with their hair and clothes flying up in the air, I thought that it shows a couple doing artistic gymnastics.

Schio (Italy): I live in Schio (VI) in the north-east of Italy, the next sculpture is from here and it is by a local artist called Mario Converio. It has a gymnast doing a workout with a ring. Balanced on her head, she is floating in the air.

Vicenza (Italy): Here is another work of Leonardo Lucchi. It is similar to the one presented above - here a girl is trying to balance herself on a narrow plank. However, instead of a sense of equilibrium, this sculpture transmits a sense of precariousness, as if the child is going to fall down.

At the end, let me conclude this post with a sculpture from Verona (Italy), the city of Romeo and Juliet. This sculpture is by the famous British sculptor Marc Quinn. In this the girl doing a yoga pose is balancing herself on the tip of elbows.

So did you like my selection of sculptures related to sports, gymnastics and yoga? I think that sports and yoga are good themes for sculptures, also because they are not very common.

Have you seen any good sports related sculptures? Do share information about them.

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