A year in art lost, with major events forced to redraw their calendar

Postponements, reschedulings, changes - events in the art world have had to redraw their calendar and their priorities

Over the last years, India’s art calendar had become etched in stone – or so most believed. International schedules kept it in mind when drawing up plans for travel, or when hosting similar related events. In recent months, those dates have caused as much havoc in offices as the pandemic has in our lives. In the art world, it isn’t just 2020 that’s being nixed, some are cancelling out 2021 as well. Organisations are facing the brunt of financial losses and letting people go. Dates have been recalibrated, though no one can say for sure whether they will hold. There is overwhelming support and crossing of fingers that the events will survive – but will they?

The fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale that was to open on December 12 has been postponed by 11 months when circumstances might be more “conducive for visitors, staff, and others” in a Kerala that has seen a surge in Covid cases. Goa-based multi-disciplinary arts event Serendipity Arts Festival will miss its December 2020 deadline too, and New Delhi’s prestigious India Art Fair in January 2021 has been shifted to 2022. In Mumbai, the Kala Ghoda Festival will miss its date with visitors in the city’s cultural district. And yet, all is not lost – yet.

Sunil Munjal, the moving force behind Serendipity, was an early mover to the digital space, having organised a web festival in April 2020 that, he claims, “got a viewership of one million in six days”. That’s a whopping count, and should be a benchmark for the digital edition of the sixth Serendipity Arts Festival in December “because we did not want to take a break from its annual rhythm, though we have changed the format from the physical to the digital. It will encompass the complete festival experience; all that will be missing is the physical presence of the audience, and, of course, there will be no tasting of dishes,” he laughs, referring to the food that has been an integral part of the event.

Nor is Munjal ready to share a date for the next edition of the physical festival. “It’s a long haul still,” he says. “No one knows when things will get fixed, so we’ll take a call some time later next year.” Till then, its online programming is keeping the brand alive.

Not so India Art Fair, the country’s marquee event, which has definitely taken a break for now – though its 2020 edition was not impacted by the outbreak. With 2021 out of the reckoning, its next schedule has been firmed up for the end of January 2022 “for which we’ve received overwhelming response from all quarters,” says its director, Jagdip Jagpal, though that sentiment might be a tad exaggerated. With that, India Art Fair will also return to Pragati Maidan, from where it started, though in a newer and, hopefully, vastly improved space. Neither participants, nor visitors, it might be added, will miss the chaos of commuting to its previous venue, the NSIC Grounds.

A loss of a year’s revenue for the Fair won’t be easy given how it’s had to struggle over previous editions, but Jagpal hopes the respite will allow her time and space to re-strategise and re-prioritise, allowing her to “extend opportunities for high quality works by artists not shown before”. A prolific Instagrammer, who uses social media unrelentingly to promote art and artists, she’s also hoping to put in stringent – but friendly – safety protocols.

Many had hoped Jagpal might emulate other international fairs with an online affair, but Jagpal is adamant that it isn’t the solution to the actual event. “My feedback from galleries about online viewing rooms is that they have not been very successful,” she says. “In my experience, there is very little interest in unknown artists online, and as for those artists whose works are already familiar, galleries can promote those on their own.”

Besides, an online fair would have to limit the number of works as well as galleries, which would be patently unfair to others that IAF has partnered with over the years.

In Mumbai, Brinda Miller has had no qualms shifting the February 2021 edition of the Kala Ghoda Festival to the digital arena, though she’s banking on bringing the 2022 edition back offline. Kala Ghoda Festival has always been a people’s event with “audiences interacting on the streets”, but KGF 2021 “will be a totally different festival, programming wise, for a different kind of audience”. It will be driven more by workshops “across 13 verticals” than by visual arts or performances.

Stand-up comedy will replace large theatre performances. Cinema, already a digital medium, might find more space. But, then, Kala Ghoda has also already partnered with Avid Learning and the Opera House to air edited clips from its archives to extend its reach to a wider, younger audience, eliminating geography in the process.

While word on revised schedules for other art events is still awaited – the Bihar Museum Biennale is currently showing a March 2021 opening – there are whispers that the respite might see the entry of other players wanting to find a toehold in the space, thereby adding to what has become a crowded art calendar – when it restarts, that is. And when it does, participants may find that the digital has become an equal partner with the physical. “The distinction will definitely be blurred,” says Munjal. Some good may come of it, after all.