Democratising art

NT Features

The India Art Festival (IAF) – a contemporary art fair hosted annually in New Delhi and Mumbai since 2011 is presenting its debut edition at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath this weekend. In this season, the festival is spreading their mission of ‘democratising art viewing and buying’ to India’s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru.

Around 25 art galleries are showcasing 100 master artists’ works along with 300 mid-career and emerging artists, showcasing 3000 works of art displayed through 80 booths.

Since 2011, the twenty editions of India Art Festival mounted at New Delhi and Mumbai annually established the popularity of India Art Festival as a mixed art fair module wherein art galleries as well as independent artists are invited to exhibit under one roof. This democratic structure of an art fair with art galleries and independent artists under one roof has seen an appreciable growth in scale, quality, and expansion in the last decade.

India Art Festival gives artists an opportunity to expose their art to several different kinds of audiences and build their network and assess their potential markets. On the other hand, art buyers and art collectors too prefer annual art fairs to search for works of arts they like from thousands of quality artworks available under one roof, instead of exhaustive weekend hopping around city’s art spaces. It also gives an opportunity to nonparticipating artists to interact with those who are displaying their works.

Festival director, Rajendra says, “Every year thousands of new artists come out of art schools in the country, but they seldom get art galleries to represent them immediately. Today’s millennials look for ‘artworks’ which they can acquire to create inspiring ambience around their living spaces; many major and mid-level art galleries also look for art fairs in the metro-cities to reach out to the wider art buyer base. Today’s art buyers are working rich who look for a ‘one-stop art shop’ with thousands of art choices under one roof; India Art Festival fulfills the needs of both artists and art buyers.”

Rajendra further adds, “All these factors together made India Art Festival expand its base from Mumbai to Delhi and now to Bengaluru in the last twelve years. India Art Festival has successfully expanded the periphery of art patronage and art choice presented to the art buyers. The young talent teeming with the unbridled form of creativity brings refreshing and new radical visual art voices to the art festival from rural as well as urban India.”

This year, 100 master and established artists represented by various art galleries from Mumbai, New Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Agartala can be seen at the art festival presenting an outstanding panorama of Indian art. Apart from art galleries, hundreds of independent artists hailing from various places from Tamil Nadu to Jammu and Tripura to Gujarat are showcasing their artworks for the first time after two years of pandemic at Bengaluru. The independent artists include mid-career, established as well as young rising stars of tomorrow.

The specialty of the first edition at Bengaluru is the Gallery Pavilion that displays stunning artworks by master artists from various galleries. Festival director Rajendra says, “The response from galleries across the country to the India Art Festival at Bengaluru is overwhelming, even though it is a first edition in the city.”

Gnani Arts from Singapore is also participating. The art works by the ten artists from Singapore’s Gnani Arts is a mix of figurative art and enhanced styles in vibrant colours. The paintings and sculptures of P Gnana, lingering on the figurative-abstraction idiom, exudes the universal emotion of love. So catch the exhibit this weekend and take in your dose of art.