Bhubaneswar: Around 20 artists from the state and across the country, as well as from abroad will take part in the Bhubaneswar Art Trial Project-2018, the first-of-its-kind project, scheduled to begin at Old Town here October 18.
The project will be curated by Jagannath Panda and Premjish Achari and has ‘Navigation is Offline’ as its theme.
The trail will start with Artist’s Walk through the trail along with volunteers. October 18 the teams will start their artworks and by November 16 they are required to complete them. The inauguration ceremony of the trail will be held at Guajhara November 18 followed by a colloquium session November 24 and the closing ceremony is scheduled for December 18 at Guajhara. Various outreach programmes such as seminars, workshops for children, film screenings and cultural programmes have also been planned during the two-month-long event.
It may be mentioned here that the project is being organised by an art organisation Utsha and supported by the Tourism and Culture departments of the state government, Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and Tata Steel.
Founder of Utsha Jagannath Panda said, “We are using this interactive public art project as a way to involve the community and artists to understand how we imagine and remember a city.” He added that through art projects such as this; they focus to showcase how the city of Bhubaneswar is “imagined and how it is remembered now.”
“Cities are mediated by received knowledge and people’s memories and imaginations. Using public art as an important vector our attempt is to map the collective journey in the formation of a city by navigating through personal memories and learned knowledge,” he pointed out.
The 1.3-kilometre-long trail project at Old Town in the city will showcase street houses, important medieval monuments, modern and contemporary architecture, schools, shops and public institutions. The artists will explore these edifices from different time periods and interact with the community to map the transformations and record the memories and aspirations of the community about the city.
Notably, Utsha is a city-based charitable trust which was setup by artist Jagannath Panda in 2012 to provide an alternative space for artists to create and experiment in Odisha. Its vision is to make Odisha an acknowledged centre of excellence and innovation in contemporary art.