For every piece of art, there’s a purpose and every piece of art is inspired by a cause without which art goes superfluous, and fails to reach out to the people.
Martina Babu, a young Muscat resident, has always wanted to send out a message to society and in the journey, she experimented with more than one form of art eventually realising that she is a sculptor and a painter.
As a schoolgirl, she learned the art from her teachers in Qatar and Muscat without any external influence but she had by then realised what her medium to communicate with the world was.
“For me, art is nothing but the medium that I always wanted to communicate with society and while talking with the world through the form of art, I realised myself,” said Martina, who’s in the final preparations of her BFA exams.
Martina who had won two times national prizes for painting late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos in 2015 and 2016 consecutively from a whopping number of 1,700 participants have also drawn for anti-smoking, anti-alcohol and anti-drugs campaigns in Doha before she painted her thoughts on women empowerment and women safety. She is an advocate of women’s rights across the world.
Martina’s world pivots around three things: academics, art for social causes and health and hygiene. She attributed high regard to women’s safety and humanity.
This young girl after her formal education in Indian School Muscat (ISM) and Doha joined Global Public School in Ernakulam, with a rare speciality of the commercial art-oriented scheme before she joined Chithra Kala Parishad in Bangaluru but had to discontinue due to the pandemic and had to return home.
Some of her paintings that won critical acclaim are Lost Identity, Home, Direction, LOVE and the like.
After Covid, she joined BFA at SSUS (Sri Shankaracharya College, Kaladi) and passed out with the first rank. Painting, for sure, is her Forte and will be graduating next year. Probably, she is one of the few girls who conducted a solo exhibition well before they reached 18. Martina got an opportunity to learn murals, cultural art, creativity, acrylic, water paint, etc as part of her studies which, according to her family, is an additional benefit to her studies.
“We could see the God-given talent in her which we wanted her to nourish and we are not bothered or worried of the returns of choosing what she wanted to do in her life,” Babu Joseph, her father, said.
Recently, she has hit the headlines yet again with her series of 130 paintings that described a poem continuously in 24 hours.
“I see myself as an absolute novice who simply hopes to learn and sustain my creative journey, sharing with the world my artistic findings regarding people, the essence of contemporary lives and course channelling it in a storytelling manner.”
She was never a slow learner at school. Martina was reasonably good in her academics 10th Std A+ for all subjects and she secured all A+ in her class 12 as well with 96.5 per cent marks.
“I and my soul always love art,” she summarised.
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