An eight-day festival along the Mandovi in Panaji next month will bring together not one or two but eight different art forms, including fashion and culinary, finds Gargi Gupta
December is generally the best time to be in Goa, and this year, there’s further incentive to visit – the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), an eight-day cultural extravaganza along a two-km stretch of the Mandovi river in Panaji.
To be held from December 16-23 at seven venues, SAF, an initiative of industrialist Sunil Munjal, is a free festival dedicated to the contemporary arts, says festival director Preeta Singh. But where other festivals concentrate on at the most two art forms, SAF encompasses eight – music, dance, theatre, folk crafts, visual arts, culinary arts, photography and fashion. Another feature that sets SAF apart, says Singh, is the emphasis on inter-disciplinarity, on collaborative projects between artists – local, national and international – working in different disciplines, rather than showcasing each of the arts in their ‘pure’, classical forms.
Some highlights:
Edge of faith
Who: Prabuddha Dasgupta
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: This is a set of images that the acclaimed fashion photographer, who made Goa his home in the last years of his life, put together for his 2009 book by the same name. These black-and-white portraits of Goa’s Catholic community capture beautifully their confusion, caught between a glorious past and an uncertain future.
Old homes, new homelands
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: This exhibition, from the private collection of Arminio Rebiero, has photographs from the late 19th and through the 20th century of his extended family in Goa, Mumbai, Karachi as well as in Africa and Europe.
Ten histories: Goan costume
Who: Wendell Rodericks
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: A sneak preview of the ‘Moda Goa Museum’ – museum of Goan fashion down the ages – that this Goa-based fashion designer is putting together at his lovingly restored 450-year home. Included are an effigy of Narkasur burnt on Diwali, Goa’s kunbi saris and women’s lingerie from the 1930s.
Khel tiatr
Where: Various locations
What: A chance for outsiders to get a taste of this indigenous theatre form that presents the travails of working and lower middle-class Goan Catholics. The production at SAF will be about how Goans, more than 50 years after Goa gained independence, continue to scramble for Portuguese passports.
Terra cognita? Three moments in the history of the graphic image in India, 1556-2016
Who: Ranjit Hoskote
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: An archival exhibition of graphics, pop art, and certain forms of photography from the late 19th-20th century.
Living traditions
Who: Murad Ali, Akram Khan, Purbayan Chatterjee, Satyajit Talwalkar, Kaushiki Chakraborty, Ajay Joglekar, Yogesh Samsi
Where: Kala Akademy (6-8pm)
When: Dec 16-17
What: Young musicians are dressed up like yesteryear musicians and perform compositions recorded in early 20th-century before recording technology first came to India.
Lucid sleep
Who: Bhisaji Gadekar, Jeetin Rangher, Lisa Stertz, Murari Jha, Uriel, Virginia Zanetti and Yasmin Jahan Nupur
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: A series of live art performances in various rooms of the 16th century site, Goa’s oldest surviving building.
A tale of two cities
Where: Adil Shah Palace
What: Young artists from India and Sri Lanka explore and interpret the historical, spiritual, religious, political, cultural aspects of Varanasi and Anuradhapura.
Culinary
Where: Jardim Garcia de Orta
What: An exploration of the history and diversity of Goan food, including workshops on exotic ingredients, feni appreciation, fermentation, baking and breads, etc.
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