Bhubaneswar: Two young artists have explored the rich cultural heritage of and around Bhubaneswar through their visual artistic skills.

Utsha Foundation For Contemporary Art, Bhubaneswar, recently hosted an open day of Tehmeena Firdos and Radhika Wader. Both the women have been part of a month-long residency programme.

Tehmeena Firdos is Delhi-based freelance artist. She works on narrative graphic strips along with collage and book-making incorporated with text and poems.

She believes changing studio space, geographical idea, light, people leads to change the working process and idea of narration.

"I understand my practice not as something seen through a singular lens, but as collages of multiple interests and thoughts that I attempt to thread into visuals. In a sense, all my work stems from a process that is individualistic and personal and in turn becomes an underlying motif that keeps recurring in my drawings; often as graphic self-portraits interspersing popular imagery," she said.

Notions of comfort-discomfort, restful-restlessness became a part of this exploration as she created visual clashes through techniques of collage.

"Spontaneity in the act of making becomes a way of actualising my thought process. It allows me to capture my response to the happenings around, and to translate them as visual statements," she said.

Radhika Wader is a visual artist currently based in Baroda. She has completed her MVA in painting at the faculty of fine arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda in 2014-2016.

"My work is a visual documentation of confusion, curiosities, questions and introspection, Solutions about the universe. Bhubaneswar city has various aspects of all these imbibed in its architecture," she said.

Another element which she used in her work is sound.

The sound, which I usually record from various sources and layer them with pre-recorded ancient mammal voices and compose them in some formulae which helps me to create the balance in that particular atmosphere. The sound also helps me making it more personal and makes the work reach its origin of thought," she said.

She has recorded sounds from various temples, roadsides, public parks and other places in the city and incorporated them in her work.