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Convenor of Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) Dr Oscar Rebello has been nominated for CNN-IBN's Indian of the Year Award 2007 in public service category Vote for him at: http://www.cnnibnindianoftheyear.com/publicservice_voting_new.php --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tiatriste Portraits by Alex Fernandes Dayanita Singh, the internationally renowned photographer who has her home in Saligao, recently opened an exhibition of B&W studio portraits by Alex fernandes at the Literati Book shop in Calangute. The prints made on archival quality paper will be on display till the end of the month. Mr. Tomazinho Cardozo, the eminent tiatriste, made a short speech on the Konkani folk theatre whose actors and actresses are subjects in this exhibition. In the catalogue specially released at the occasion Ranjit Hoskote prominent curator and art critic writes "'Tiatristes' is a sequence of exquisite portraits, testifying to the adroit balance between affection and irony, the attentive and the ludic, that Fernandes has brought to his sitters". He adds "The figures that we see in these portraits are at once self and not-self: they operate in the space of transition between experience and fantasia, aspiration and achievement. By an elegant existential algebra, they are engaged in the life of performance, and equally, they are busy with the performance of life". Fernandes, born in Mumbai of Goan parents notes "Significantly, the tiatr also started in Bombay (now Mumbai) as a way for the expatriate Goans to keep in touch with their homeland (then still a Portuguese colony and a sea-journey away)." Rahul Srivastava noted social scientist and cultural theorist who lives in Goa says in the catalogue "Goa became larger than life as it moved and circulated in the minds of Goan travelers and globetrotters. These dislocations created a yearning for familiarity and familiarity unearthed glorious archetypes, fondly nestling in tinted memories and dreams. No wonder, unrelated Goan artists produced similar images in distinct genres, creating a world of familiarity and identification. Their popularity became part of a larger collective consciousness and fed all kinds of rooted and dislocated imaginations and now it is difficult to trace autonomous patterns." "I'm not a big tiatr fan myself," Fernandes confesses. "But I saw in my work sharp similarities with those of the characters in (cartoonist) Mario Miranda's book on Goa." The exhibition will be on till the 30th of January , 2008, at the Literati book shop, in Calangute. (ENDS) Goanet A&E http://www.goanet.org