A first of its kind Indo – US project is being initiated by one of India‘s top ten eminent contemporary artists, Manav Gupta, that builds multiple linkages at different venues in the USA and India between the countries and the people via the great and sacred rivers of India and the USA and their waters, through art. The global project engages different other art forms as well as people from all walks of life, with the river of clay waterfront, created with the quintessentially Indian potters produce, engaging with cutting edge installations and signature paintings, with America’s people.

After a record turnout of a hundred thousand footfalls at the Global India Preview of the Project at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, Gupta, who has been sought after for his depth of color light and composition in his paintings, was invited to deliver the prestigious President’s lecture at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and the Forecast talk on Public Art by the two leading international organizations in the U.S. last month for disseminating his Global Public Art Project on sustainability that brings people of the two nations together in his upcoming Travelling Trilogy IV, USA edition.

Also, the artist, who has been specially pre-commissioned last October to create a special suite of works from his signature series umbilical cords of earth, water on the theme by a US based collector couple, has started his on-sites research here , on an invitation by them for a long leg of this tour for absorbing insights, taking notes and sketches on how the cities along some of the rivers of America like the Mississippi to the Hudson and the East River respond to its waters and to look at sites of engagement where he would create dialogues on the above theme through his  public art. He is getting ready for a seminal suite of works that he would bring to the US, April 2016 onwards, marking the World Earth Day.

Connecting the River Ganga with the River Mississippi, through the signature ‘umbilical cords series’ paintings that have been auctioned by Christie’s, Bonhams’ ,Philip de Pury and by deploying the humble Indian potter’s produce to form avant garde cutting edge installations series “excavations in hymns of clay”, the project stands to serve as an excellent tool to spread awareness on earth’s precious resources specially water and sustainable living through “healing of the rivers” with an engagement of people with a ‘little of their heart, soul and mind space‘ ;besides building bridges between India and USA through the unique first of its kind conceptualization and idea of ‘Ganga to Mississippi” that it brings with it as the humble contribution of the artist culminating from the two decades of his experience of taking art beyond art to seek consciousness on environmental issues through his paintings, Public art, collaborative, performance and may other art initiatives beyond boundaries between nations and beyond just himself.

It strives to reach new heights in a first of its kind initiative ever as an engagement with the Mississippi and the people of the land by the Indian artist via dialogues through art and literature, dance, music, poetry, theatre in a language that is contemporary, a vocabulary that’s global, art that’s avant garde as well as first of its kind in deploying Indian pottery to create cutting edge large scale art and a concept that’s as unique as its universal.

With the New York Consul General of India organizing a grand preview of the project exhibition at the Consulate, the artist is working hard towards a run up to World Earth Day on 22nd of April 2016 in New York followed by multiple chapters of the project shaping up at multiple venues in different cities.