BRICS leaders admire ‘sand monuments’ of five nations

India’s renowned sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik has created the sculptures of monuments of all five participating nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The leaders visited the sculptures on Saturday. “It was a great honour when Prime Minister Narendra Modi explained the importance of all the monuments to the Heads of the States. The leaders spent around ten minutes looking at the monuments and also clicked a group photograph,” Pattnaik told PTI. 

While Taj Mahal represents India in the monuments, the sculptures also include Great Wall of China (China), Saint Basil Cathedral (Russia), Christ the Redeemer (Brazil) and Statue of Nelson Mandela (South Africa). Pattnaik said the sand sculptures were created over three days before the BRICS event kicked-off.

“Sand from all the five different nations has been used in the sculptures. All the respective governments had volunteered to send the sand. Total 45-50 tonnes of sand was used in it,” he said. 

“It is a great honour that I was given an opportunity to show the creativity during an event of such a massive scale. The message through the sculpture is unity of all the nations,” the artist said. 

Sudarshan Pattnaik is a sand artist from Odisha. He was awarded the Padma Shri by Government of India in 2014 for his contribution towards the art.