From a one-day festival that was confined to a room, AMI Arts Festival metamorphosed into a nine-day extravaganza and celebrated art and its different facets at Rabindra Tirtha in New Town. In its third year,the multi-disciplinary art festival celebrated the amalgamation of cutting-edge contemporary art and traditional crafts that aim to influence life with hope and positivity. Over the nine days, the venue came live with exhibitions, performing arts, film screening and workshops. The highlights...

Graffiti artists showcased their creativity by exploring the theme of ‘Aliens in Kolkata’. The competition was led by mentor-curator Sanatan Dinda, renowned contemporary visual artist, body painter,installation artist as well as the convener of the Behala Art Festival.

The festival had invited visual artists to submit their artwork for a fundraiser exhibition on the theme of landscapes. Titled Divergent Terrains, the competition saw an overwhelming response and theentries were a beautiful display of the Indian landscapes captured by the artists.

AMI Arts Festival promoted local crafts and the display of sustainable fashion and lifestyle exhibition by homegrown artists was a great draw.

Homegrown talents in the sphere of comedy displayed their acumen in tickling funny bones with their short acts.

“AMI Arts Festival 2022 has been a resounding success thanks to all the hard work and dedication put in by KCC and the support of our partners. The festival, a unique mix of diverse art forms, brought together people irrespective of their socio-economic or educational backgrounds and paved the way for overwhelming participation from all. We hope that we only keep growing from strength to strength and continue providing such platforms to celebrate thearts and bring people together,”said Richa Agarwal, CEO, EmamiArt.

“This was very much needed in Eastern India and I am so glad we did it in an open space like Rabindra Tirtha. It’s about making art more accessible to people. We wanted to build curiosity among people and they can engage here with multidisciplinary art coming together under one roof,” said Reena Diwan, director Kolkata Centre for Creativity.

One of the most striking features of the festival was Photography Over The Years, which was a stellar display of vintage cameras. Organised in collaboration with Museo Camera Museum, a never-before-seendisplay of cameras from the visual archives of Kulwant Roy attracted photography enthusiasts.

The evening also saw a beautiful kathak performance by Madhuka Dutta and Aeshia Rosaleen.

AMI Arts Festival witnessed many talk shows virtually and also on ground. The discussionon indigenous food by Boro Baski on traditional food of the Santhals and their cooking process was enriching.

The Afterlife of Performance ft Nikhil Chopra stood out for its free-flowing movements. The exhibition seeks to be approachable to one and all through exhaustive notes on the works themselves and on Chopra’s practice in general. Performers from visual and performing arts interacted and responded to Chopra’s work.

The evening soiree was asoulful one withMehfil-e-Qawwalicomprising a live rendition of age-old compositions by Danish Hussain Badayuni.