KU’s National Art Fest, ‘WAHRAAT- 2020’ concludes

Srinagar: The month- long Online National Fine Arts Festival, ‘WAHRAAT-2020’ organized by the Youth Affairs Wing, Department of Students Welfare, University of Kashmir (KU) concluded.
The competition was kept open for the students enrolled in Colleges and Universities across India. 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 of Students Welfare for successfully conducting the month long competition Vice Chancellor KU Prof. Talat Ahmad said, “Mental Health is of utmost importance especially during this pandemic and such competitions prove to be a powerful tool to deal with the current stress of isolation and uncertainty particularly within the student population.”
Prof Talat added that the idea of making this competition open and without any theme is really worth appreciation “as anyone can come up with their artwork with no constraints.” He said “ Keeping one self occupied, spirited and competitive through such contests while sitting at home is a real therapy to maintain our mental health”.
Prof. Raies A Qadri, the 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 also said “amidst the worldwide COVID-19 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/ May this year in order to provide healthy activity to the students to dispel and mitigate the depressive affects of fear and anxiety throgh these online activities and competitions like WAHRAAT National Art Fest which was open to students across india.”.
While providing details of the competition Shahid Ali Khan , Cultural Officer DSW KU said that hundreds of students from colleges and Universities across the country have submited their art works which would be forwarded to a pannel 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.