I went for a quick half an hour to the India Art Festival, which was held on MMRDA grounds in Mumbai. It was like a bombardment of art, with all big and small artists from all over India putting up stalls with their artwork. Most artists shared stalls with one or two others . There were artworks from other parts of the world too, put up by some international galleries.
I spotted the ever graceful Lalita Lajmi and was lucky to spend some time with her. She had two stalls showcased with her print-work art, hosted by a gallery. Her art always inspires me!
I searched desperately in the chaos and art clutter for Damien Hirst's works, which were supposed to be displayed there ( newspapers said so!). All I saw was a huge blow-up of his famous skull sculpture! I might have missed any other installation of his, even if it was there. It was all a zig-zag of stalls and artwork and one had to actually find the way around amidst the colourful chaos!
Just near the entrance was this huge ( about 10 feet) installation of a skull made by artist Sukanta Panigrahy. Well , we seemed to have our very own Hirst!
I found it fascinating, as it was made of e- waste. The entire thing was made of old CDs, mother-boards, mouses, wires and keyboards!The teeth were cleverly made of computer mouses! If that was not enough, it emitted smoke and some weird sci-fi hiss along with the smoke, every 5 mins! This artist is also famous for making the much noticed black horse Installation in the last Kala Ghoda festival! By the way, he seems to be a skull specialist, as there were two more skull installations made by him!
All in all, it was an interesting experience, though I couldn't help feeling that it was too much art and too many artists! I guess this would have been a great platform for building bridges and connecting with galleries and fellow artists!
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