“Having just a vision’s no solution/Everything depends on execution.” These lines from Stephen Sondheim’s “Putting It Together” are most appropriate for the rigging of the recently-concluded first edition of the Bengal Biennale. One can imagine how the organisers — Malavika and Jeet Banerjee of Gameplan and the curator and director, Siddharth Sivakumar — sweated to make this mammoth art event a success. It opened first in Santiniketan and then in Calcutta a few days later. What made it interesting and more accessible is that apart from big names — Sudhir Patwardhan, T.V. Santhosh, Mahesh Baliga — from all over the country, it invited young people and collectives to participate and included studio visits, conversations and workshops as well. The synergy of all these artists, academicians and craftspeople made the different surprising venues in Santiniketan resonate with vibrant energy. This was only possible because Siddharth is a native of Santiniketan. The team was lucky enough to have the scholar, R. Siva Kumar, on the committee of advisers. Luckily, Nandan Kala Bhavana’s wish to exhibit Rabindranath Tagore’s paintings coincided with the Bengal Biennale’s proposal to do so and a rare exhibition of 80 paintings by the poet was held.
The theme of the Bengal Biennale being ‘Anka Banka’ (anka banka means winding and anka also means drawing) opened up possibilities of acting unconventionally and also encouraged the participants to deviate from their practices. The popular mythologist, Devdutt Pattnaik, presented an entire body of drawings based on his personal readings of Indian mythology that were often radically different from the ones we have been brought up on. His drawings, too, included elements that would never be accepted in traditional iconography. Cinema was touched upon. In an exhibition curated by Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Mrinalini Vasudevan, the focus was on Arundhati Debi, the independent-minded actress, singer and director, who had studied at Santiniketan and married the film director, Tapan Sinha, later in life.
A piece by Devdutt Pattanaik from the exhibition, MYTrutH, curated by Kunal Shah Bengal Biennale
Archana Hande had set up at Somnath and Reba Hore’s former home a captivating installation that chased shadows using rejected jacquard punched cards and choreographed digital lights as a comment on the struggle of textile workers. The Bolpur women who stitch kanthas created Kanthar Ghar at GABAA, an artist-led centre. The artist, Mithu Sen, collaborated with Sanyasi Lohar, an educator, and Bodi Baski to paint the letters of the almost forgotten Ol Chiki script of the Santhali language on huts. They all slogged to put things together. Without the help and cooperation of the artists, it would not have been possible to pull off the Bengal Biennale. Pushpamala N. appeared as Abanindranath’s Bharat Mata and cooked a quick dish whose recipe she had learnt from the journalist, Gauri Lankesh, who was assassinated for her beliefs.
The fast deteriorating environment of Santiniketan was one of the main concerns of the performance artist, Nikhil Chopra, and the academicians who made videos and installations. During his six-hour-long performance, Chopra made a drawing of the vanishing Santiniketan landscape. In another project curated by Anshuman Dasgupta, the economist, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, and the graphic novelist, Sarnath Banerjee, collaborated to make videos on rapidly depleting water levels. At a time when ‘development’ is proving to be just the opposite, Sanchayan Ghosh’s installation brought together geographers, economists, sociologists, folk musicians, and farmers to construct a collective understanding of the land of Birbhum.
In Mahesh K.S.’s installation, The Troupe, our everyday pedestal fans pirouetted like dancers. The use of technology as a means to further the end of art was quite in keeping with the spirit of Santiniketan where art and life work hand in hand. Miles away from Santiniketan, beyond the remnants of the Kopai river, at Sanatan Siddhashram, a faux Bengal village peopled with Western women in simple white sarees, was screened the film, Crossing the Divide, by Raghav Pasricha and Eva Zanettin on the Baul-Fakir tradition of Bengal. The lyrics, “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be”, kept playing in my ears.
