celebrating the recent surge in tiger population in the country hyderabadi painter fawad tamkanat has curated an art show dedicated to the majestic cat currently on display at state art gallery the show titled tiger as fawad puts is a celebration of the big cats amazing facial features and the increase in its population in the last four years in india buoyed by the fact that tiger numbers are expected to go past the 3000 mark from 2226 in 2014 in the upcoming tiger census scheduled for release soon this exhibition was put together as an endeavour to rejoice that hopefawad has roped in 80 artists both emerging and established from all over the country to contribute towards the exhibition that displays 81 tiger masks painted on fiberglass being an ardent animal lover i have been sketching animals for various ngos for many years now i wanted to do something for tiger conservation with focus on the animals significance in our cultural and societal milieu he says adding that the inspiration for the exhibition stemmed from his urge to give his sketches a threedimensional shapea couple of years back i made a few sketches of tiger masks and wanted to develop them into 3d figures threedimensional representations of sketches have splendid vigour vitality and appeal differently to onlookers so i got in touch with an 80yearold traditional sculptor from kolkata and sent him seven to eight of my drawings asking him to make 20inch to 16inch 3d masks though i was not impressed with the initial product he soon sent some amazing sculptures after i explained to him what i wanted in detail he sayspleased with the results fawad gave him bulk orders to make around 30 big and 70 small masks from his drawings prod him how he managed to rope in so many artists for the show and if it was a tedious task and fawad says he has been explaining his thoughts about the show to the artists personally for the past one year i know a lot of artists from india and abroad and have been monitoring their work for a long time i have only chosen figurative artists with a considerable body of narrative work for this project he says adding that though a lot of artists showed interest in the project he chose only those who have a genuine love for animalsfirstly i wanted to have a healthy mix of established and emerging artists in the group and being an animal lover i wanted only artists who share my feelings about the voiceless creatures this exhibition is not for fun but for a cause and its very important to me i couldnt have compromised on it and i didnt he says emphasising that not a single artwork is similar to the other because he didnt let the artists view each others works till the last minute a few artists put up pictures of their masks on social media but i asked them to pull