On view till 22 December 2024
● AMI Arts Festival is a Kolkata Centre for Creativity initiative supported by Emami CSR to support artists and creatives in the country, with a focus on Bengal.
● This week’s events include an East Bengal Club archival exhibition and music performances by Indian Ocean and Grammy-nominated Shujaat Khan.
● AMI Arts Festival 2024 will showcase leading creative personalities Pinaki De, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Sandip Ray, Shujaat Khan, and bands like Indian Ocean, Chandrabindoo, Murshidabadi Project in the coming week.
Kolkata, 15 December 2024: Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC) kicked off the 5th edition of AMI Arts Festival with a month-long celebration that featured visual arts, traditional crafts, music, photography, engaging talks, panel discussions, music, dance and theatre performances at various iconic venues in the city.
As the annual festival comes to a close, audiences can look forward to an exciting final week of musical performances and talks by well-known artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians. This schedule includes a musical performance by Grammy-nominated sitar player Shujaat Khan, a talk on Satyajit Ray’s iconic character Feluda by his son Sandip Ray and actors Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Indraneil Sengupta, and a musical dastaan by Sufi band Murshidabadi Project. In addition to music performances, an archival exhibition on East Bengal Club will be on display that will showcase memorabilia, archival objects and documents celebrating the sport and the moments that helped make the club what it is today.
Upcoming highlights from the programme include:
● IMAGINARIUM 4.0 | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 11 AM – 7 PM, on view till 11 January
● The Courage of Spirit, a football exhibition on the history of East Bengal Club | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 11 AM – 5 PM, on view till 22 December
● Anuranan, a traditional Kathak recital by Sudip Chakraborty | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 6:30 PM -7:30 PM, 18 December
● SEVENS, a three-part classical Indian dance performance by Nina Rajarani MBE |Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 4:30 PM – 6 PM, 19 December
● Feluda as a Bengal Icon, a talk about Satyajit Ray’s iconic film character | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 2:30 PM, 19 December
● Two power-packed performances by Chandrabindoo and Kabira Khada Bazar Mein| Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 5:30 PM, 19 December
● A sitar performance by Shujaat Khan | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 6:30 PM, 20 December
● Folk songs on desire and resistance from Bengal and Assam by Smt. Purabi Bhattacharyya and Ruchira Mukherjee | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 4 PM, 22 December
● A musical dastaan by sufi band Murshidabadi Project | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 5 PM, 22 December
● Two back-to-back performances by Indian Ocean and Fakira | Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 7 PM, 22 December
AMI (আ ), in Bengali translates to “I”, is an ode to the personal connections viewers have with art and culture across boundaries and borders. As a not-for-profit organization, KCC is well aware of the challenges that artists and visitors face in the industry, and annually rewards and recognises the best artworks, photographs and performances of the year, along with their makers and facilitators, providing a major boost to the country’s art and culture industry. Over the years, KCC has given voice to diverse themes ranging from contemporary and pressing social issues, mythology, religion, gender, caste and politics through the events it has showcased. Having grown in size over the years, AMI Arts Festival started off as a small local art fair and is now East India’s biggest art and culture festival.
Some of the highlights from the festival included The Lost Treasures of Bengal, an exhibition of 300 rare and forgotten Indian musical instruments once owned by the legendary Pandit Radhika, Mohan Maitra; Queering the Six Yards, an LGBTQ-themed exhibition of the saree that became a symbol of resistance for the marginalized; UTSAV III, a nation-wide open call for performances in dance, music and theatre at Victoria Memorial Hall that included a performance of Dance on Wheels by India’s leading wheelchair dance troupe Nav Utthan Group; From Fields to Folk: A Journey through Rural Heritage a group exhibition at the Indian Museum by various rural and urban museums, and various workshops on conservation, leather batik, shola art, art therapy and chemical painting.
Schedule and individual tickets for AMI Arts Festival events are available here.
East Bengal Club exhibition at Kolkata Centre for Creativity. Image Courtesy: Kolkata Centre for Creativity Chairperson of Kolkata Centre for Creativity Richa Agarwal says, “This year we are celebrating the fifth edition of AMI Arts Festival on a much larger scale than last year. We are fortunate that the festival has received so much love over the past few years and we are happy that our city – Kolkata, has supported us. Our vision for AMI Arts Festival is to create an inclusive space where artists and audiences from diverse backgrounds can connect, collaborate and be inspired. We hope the fifth edition of the festival will bring joy to both its performers and audiences to elevate Kolkata’s art and culture scene further and continue to be a platform for the Indian creative community.”
Address: Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 777, Anandapur EM Bypass, Kolkata – 700 107, West Bengal,
India
Hours: 11AM – 7PM