India Art Festival: Promising a fair deal -ANURADHA VELLAT,THE HINDU

We keep speaking of art for everyone but, the reality remains that we fail to represent more than half of the real scenes. Be it artists or their causes, there is a certain amount of lobbying one cannot escape. And so when the India Art Festival came to Delhi with its fourth edition, it was a delight for everyone, including the artists, visitors as well as the organisers. It brought together 35 art galleries, 500 artists from 40 cities across the world, with a wide range of works including paintings, sculptures, photographs, ceramics, textiles and installations from rural as well as urban backgrounds. There were artists from as far as Chennai, Tripura, Jammu and Ahmedabad. Says Rajendra, art festival director, “Despite demonetisation and GST implementation, growth-wise art has gone up. There has been a 20 per cent increase in the sales. In the global art market, India still has 1% or 1.2% share. The India Art Fair is an international festival which has its own benchmarks. But, a whole lot of artists and galleries are left out of the circuit. There is nothing wrong with it; it is a different kind of a set up. India has 80,000-90,000 practising artists and hardly 400 galleries, including private and public. For Jehangir Art Gallery, there is a waiting list of five years. So where do these young and budding artists go?”

Even though this was the fourth edition in Delhi, it is the 12 edition of the festival itself, with Mumbai being the host. “We are also hoping to move to other cities because this is the most affordable art fair in the country right now. The continuous support from the art lovers, patrons and art world at large has made an exceptional growth possible for this festival,” says Rajendra.

It appears that the struggle for young artists who are fresh graduates is double. The pressure of having to create something world class is met by the fact that they aren’t already established in the scene. “There are huge number of artists who are not being represented by galleries or being inducted in to that system. One gallery can hardly handle 40 artists per year so everyone cannot be accommodated. This is a place for them to get noticed along with established artists,” says Rajendra.