The Bhubaneswar Art Trail 2018 (BAT) was inaugurated by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the Old Town area here on Sunday.
Tourism Minister Ashok Chandra Panda, Sports and Youth Services Minister Chandra Sarathi Behera, Cmmissioner – cum- Secretary, Tourism, Sports and Youth Services Vishal Kumar Dev, Vice Chairman, Bhubaneswar Development Authority Dr Krishnan Kumar, Managing Director, Odisha Mining Corporation Vineel Krishna and CMD Nalco Dr TK Chand attemnded as guests. Jagannath Panda and Premjish Achari, curators of the event were also present.
The project comes as an initiative by Utsha Foundation for Contemporary Art in collaboration with Odisha Tourism, Bhubaneswar Development Authority, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, and Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited.
Located in a trail of 1.3 km in Old Town Bhubaneswar, the month-long Bhubaneswar Art Trail 2018 is more than just a walk in the beautiful heritage district of Bhubaneswar with amazing artworks by artists from all over the world. It also consists of several events that explore the underlying curatorial theme ‘Navigation is Offline’.
Speaking on the occasion, curator Panda said, “It is not an easy task to curate a public art exhibition. When you are working on a space like Old Town which has so many layers of history manifested through architecture, monuments, walls, ponds, lakes, gardens, residential areas, etc. it also becomes a responsibility. Our challenge was that how better could we represent and respond to this space and its community. But for us the biggest advantage was that the space and the community responded to us in an equally intense way”.
“The way this Art Trail is emerging now, we cannot see it as individual artistic expression. Bhubaneswar Art Trail is an expression of the Old Town and its people. This is how each community-based art project should evolve. It should be committed to excellent art making but it should also be dedicated to the possibilities of inspiring a vision for the community. That is why we are not limiting the Trail to an exhibition” he added.
Achari said, “Apart from the art exhibition we have a range of diverse programmes lined up for you. Some of them include a one-day colloquium titled Propositions which will feature renowned curators, art historians, pedagogues, etc., a two-day film screening and a film poster exhibition on Gandhian values in collaboration with NFAI, an art workshop for children specially designed by Art1st Foundation, talks by various writers, filmmakers, historians and various cultural programmes.”
