#TG Life
The Serendipity Arts Festival, now in its fourth year, will begin from December 15 to 22 with over 100 compelling projects including exhibitions, performances and immersive art experiences. This year the Festival will take place across 10 venues in Panaji, Goa highlighting the 7 core disciplines including craft, culinary arts, dance, music, theatre, visual arts and photography with over
1500 artists.
The Serendipity Arts Festival 2019 is India’s first multi-disciplinary arts event committed to creating tangible change across the country’s cultural spectrum by engaging the public and increasing awareness of how art can impact society, whilst generating interest in public art projects across India.
In its previous edition, the festival attracted more than 4,50,000 visitors and activated 1500 artists creating significant impact and contributing to the cultural regeneration of Panaji, Goa.
An initiative of the Serendipity Arts Foundation, founded in 2014 by Sunil Kant Munjal, the Festival still stands as the only art event in the country that unites the creative disciplines. The fourth edition is designed to create a balance between artistic rigour and accessibility of contemporary art to foster cultural development and showcasing performative, visual, and culinary practices supporting artists across South Asia.
The first three editions of the event transformed Goa by adding to its cultural and architectural landscape with contemporary art experiences, and received a positive reception from the public, redefining perceptions of the arts whilst also energising arts production, awareness and practice across the country.
Projects will unite art forms from different parts of the country, diluting regional divisions and encouraging cross-cultural exchange. The line-up of curators for 2019 includes, Craft- Pramod KG, Kristine Michael, music- Aneesh Pradhan and Sneha Khanwalkar, theatre - Atul Kumar and Arundhati Nag, dance- Leela Samson and Mayuri Upadhya, culinary Arts - Rahul Akerkar and Prahlad Sukhtankar, visual arts- Dr Jyotindra Jain and Sudarshan Shetty, photography- Rahaab Allana and Ravi Agarwal.
Highlights of this year’s visual arts discipline range from Sudarshan Shetty’s curation emphasising the production of knowledge and innovation outside the framework of mainstream institutions, to Dr Jyotindra Jain’s project, which offers critical viewing of popular Indian imagery at the turn of the 20th century in the construction of its social and national identities.
Projects will be further activated by diverse collateral programming including panel discussions, children’s programmes, and workshops for the differently-abled. These initiatives are an integral part of the Foundation’s key mission of making the arts accessible and developing arts audiences both in numbers and in diversity.
The 100 projects this year will be accompanied by a series of special projects curated by Nancy Adajania, Anurupa Roy, HH Art Spaces, Harkat Studios, St+art India Foundation, Aradhana Seth and Vidya Shivadas , among several others. For additional information on programming, visit www.serendipityartsfestival.com.
