Kishore Singh: Finding new ground in Goa

The Serendipity Arts Festival has just kicked off, so it's early to tell how it will be received, but of enthusiasm there is no lack

Just when the focus was on the third edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Goa walked in with baby steps to stake a claim to a part of the arts pie with its first edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival. The eight-day event has just kicked off, so it’s early to tell how it will be received, but of enthusiasm there is no lack. The festival is uniquely placed with a smorgasbord of activities that range from music and dance to street art, photography, craft, the visual arts, performances and food — not an entirely unexpected range, even given the silos that separate them in the formal space.

 

The brainchild of Hero Honda’s Sunil Munjal, who has been assisted by a team of curators, and who described the task as much larger than he had anticipated, at its heart in Panjim is a 500-year-old palace, Adil Shah Palace, which was inaugurated on the occasion as an arts space. Resurrected and restored after it was abandoned as the state’s old secretariat, it overlooks the river Mandovi and is a magical setting for what could become a precursor for a larger arts initiative in the capital, should the government — supportive up to this point — carry the baton.

The Adil Shah Palace in Goa, which has been reinvented as an arts space and is the central venue for the Serendipity Arts Festival

At Adil Shah Palace, one was able to capture some of the magic of India’s excellence of crafts tweaked especially for the occasion — Dr Jyotindra Jain had tracked down traditional artisans who captured Goa’s visual landscape in the refreshing language of Bengal’s patuas, and artists from Mithila who lavish their bridal chambers with delightful papier-mache relief that here had a more contemporary zing. From terracotta to sanjhi paper cutting and textiles, the world of India’s heritage was interspersed with more contemporary renditions that aimed to capture this very emotion, as evidenced in Manisha Parekh’s evocative, intimate “shrines” rendered with knotted silk buds, or printmaker Paula Sengupta’s pankhas with their embroideries that melded the divine with suggestions of an oncoming holocaust. 

There are conversations and talks in a calendar choc-a-bloc with plays and debates, openings and launches, and visitors are expected from across India and some from outside the country. But the success of the festival will depend as much on its engagement with the local population. Goa-based friends have oddly been supportive, or dismissive, as their mood takes them, but the enthusiasm of the local government so far has been infectious. One of the more interesting discoveries at the festival is that artist Laxman Pai, thought to have emigrated to America, is now back — and should find his share of celebrity during the ongoing festivities. Recently felicitated by the state government, there is a room dedicated to paintings by him that could turn out to be one of the star attractions of Serendipity.

While Munjal has not fully disclosed plans for the next edition of Serendipity, he has shared that it will be an annual event on a global scale. He might find the going easier the next time — for now, despite all the organisers hard work, visitors are still trying to track the eight venues of the festivities, maps are missing, programme lists are still being shared: all the problems of a nascent build-up that might have been overwhelming had the venue been elsewhere than Goa.

With Serendipity adding to the growing arts space — and appetite — in the country, those sensitive to the arts have a little more reason to rejoice. However, for it to be truly successful — and its holistic overview certainly distinguishes it from others — it will have to broadbase itself away and apart from the sameness of both participants and visitors if it isn’t to remain just another schmoozing place for those who rub shoulders the rest of the year at other venues.
 

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Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated