Art biennales, beginning 130 years ago in Venice in 1895, are, today, global cultural showcases, bringing together contemporary artists to display innovative works and foster artistic dialogue and creativity. The first edition of the Bengal Biennale: Anka Banka — Through Cross-Currents, which is unfolding across at least 27 venues spread out through Calcutta and Santiniketan, is no different. The overwhelming message of the Bengal Biennale is perhaps this: art should be accessible to everyone, not limited to galleries. It needs to be seen and experienced in everyday life. Take, for instance, Paresh Maity’s giant jackfruit installation, which sat squat outside Victoria Memorial Hall and bewildered unsuspecting visitors (one of whom marvelled about whether it might have been the favourite fruit of Queen Victoria). Inside the hall, Robert Clive proudly guarded a nakshi kantha of tales from the Ramayana, while visitors tried to decipher the chiaroscuro of Jorasanko’s interiors as seen in Gaganendranath Tagore’s cubist works, displayed alongside the most magnificent watercolours of the Arabian Nights by Abanindranath Tagore.

An artwork by Paresh Maity as part of the Bengal Biennale

An artwork depicting the Arabian Nights by Abanindranath Tagore

In another location not far away, Dayanita Singh’s Museum of Tanpura at the Indian Museum took on special poignancy given her intimate and vivacious photographs of Ustad Zakir Hussain and Ustad Rashid Khan, both of whom passed away last year. Her photographs are a masterclass in how the photographer can make herself invisible, capturing subjects in their most candid moments. This installation of black and white photographs was perhaps the most striking among all the ones in Calcutta. While Singh’s photographs rang with laughter and music, there was an eerie silence and a sense of foreboding in Chandra Bhattacharjee’s pieces at Arts Acre, which is also where Jyotirmoy De’s textile landscapes enchanted audiences by harking back to a vision of a vanishing rural idyll.

All the way across the city, churchgoers and tourists at St. James’ Church were treated to Madhvi Parekh’s rebellious and striking vision of Christianity where a temple, a mosque, and celestial bodies peek through the windows of the Last Supper — an image of syncretism that is increasingly under strain in India. Equally defiant were the portrayals of Kali by artists like K.G. Subramanyan and Chittaprosad at the Alipore Jail Museum, which was also the site for Bappaditya Biswas’s Liberation, in which indigo textile works re-examine themes of liberation, resistance, and reinvention. Also displayed there were Arpan Mukherjee’s glassy recollections of a world left behind yet lingering in memory.

At the Academy of Fine Arts, Sudarshan Shetty blurred the lines between illusion and reality while artists like Mahesh Baliga, Bhupen Khakhar, Esther David and Indrapramit Roy mused on ‘selfies’ or self-portraits, offering viewers the key to unlocking their artistic selves. Adip Dutta’s archaeological vision presented fragments that held both clues to the past and commentaries on the present’s apathy to it. But the past and its memories are ever-changing and fluid as Helin Boztepe, Jakob Gautel and Korhan Basaran showed through their works at The Zs’ Precinct. Catch these artists and more before the Bengal Biennale ends tomorrow.