SHILLONG, MAR 1: World renowned blind sculptor from Italy Felice Tagliaferri arrived in Meghalaya on Saturday, which is his first visit to India, to encourage and promote his mission of teaching the art of sculpting to people with disabilities, especially the blind.
Felice is here for a two week-long inclusive workshop for the people with disabilities which kick started in the Bethany Society on Saturday.
Organized by the Bethany Society in collaboration with the CBM and the state’s arts and culture department, the workshop is for the people with disabilities from Bethany Society, other special schools in the region besides people and students from different schools.
Felice is teaching around eight visually impaired students and others with different disabilities besides 15 teachers from Shillong.
Felice, who lost his eyesight at 14, took to sculpting when he was 25. He shot to fame when he created his own version of “Cristo Velato,” or “Veiled Christ”, a 1753 masterpiece, when he was denied to touch it in 2008.
The ‘Christ revealed’ marble artwork of his, which he worked for almost two years, fetched him a whopping 200,000 Euros, the 40 plus blind artist said.
Apart from running an art school in Belonia, his home town, where 200 students attend in a year, Felice travels the world to conduct workshop and teaches art to both blind and people with normal eyesight.
He said he was studying furniture restoration when he joined a test to check whether he has what it takes for sculpturing. Following the experiment, he never looked back.
Since the U-turn in his life, master sculptors in Bologna, Carrara, Spain, France and Germany have helped him shaped his own works that are known all over Italy.
“I see myself lucky to be doing what I want to do in life. I believe that other blind people like me can also express shapes that they see,” Felice told reporters after his first day workshop.
“I hope my intervention will go beyond schools and make art education inclusive,” he said.
Interestingly, Felice will be teaching sculpting to people with normal eyesight by blind folded them.
“Because we are learning completely new art so if you blind fold people, they will start from really zero and will be more creative in their expression,” he said.
He, however, said that it will be much easier to teach the blind as they are just like me. “We will in no way have barriers among ourselves,” he said.
Bethany runs the first inclusive school in the state and is instrumental in highlighting the importance of inclusive education for disabled children.
The final art work will be unveiled on March 12 at the Bethany Society premises.
“We would be able to produce a statue which will be inaugurated on the March 12,” Bethany Society director C Norahan said.
He said, “What is the statue going to be, we don’t know but Felice said that it would come from within.”- By Our Reporter
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