Hit the Bhubaneswar Art Trail

Bhubaneswar is many things at once. It’s been dubbed the ‘Temple City’, where 350 of India's thousand-odd medieval temples remain. It's also ranked amongst the top 20 best performing smart cities in the world. Its advanced town planning and resident-engagement also won it the prestigious and elusive American Pierre L’Enfant International Planning Award.

The city where the past and present intertwine is debuting its first Bhubaneshwar Art Trail (BAT), which kickstarted yesterday. It’s part of the city-wide festival for the Hockey World Cup in collaboration with the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), and curated by the Utsha Foundation for Contemporary Art.

BAT 2018 has opened up a public atelier—a 1.3 kms public stretch put together through workshops or studios of artists, where masters, assistants, students, and apprentices. Take a walk through it over the next month and you will find yourself winding down medieval monuments, modern and contemporary architecture, schools, shops, and public institutions. The theme for the debut edition is: Navigation is Offline. To walk down the trail, navigation literally begs you to put down your screens and look around. In the real, offline world.

"Art trails are hugely successful in Europe, both as community events and as platforms for art practice,” says Krishan Kumar, Vice Chairman of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority. "BAT is moving towards establishing its maiden mark in the history of art trails in India, and we are planning to make this an annual event to encourage our local artists.”

VICE spoke with three participating artists to find out more about their work that breaks out of an art gallery and is meant for everyone.

Drawing upon her architectural knowledge, Teja Gavankar likes to work with forms and spaces. Gavankar holds a certificate in Indian Aesthetics from Kalina University in Mumbai; received the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation supporting International Residency (India-Quebec) at The Darling Foundry, Montreal; and participated in the Khoj Peers Share Programme at Khoj International Artists’ Association, Delhi.

Playing with clay and bamboo, Gavankar’s work for BAT aims to create space and represents the point of diversion that exists between old and new Bhubaneswar.

“The Old Town boasts beautiful structure everywhere,” she says. “Every nook and corner has history attached, which makes it so interesting and intriguing. My forte is architectural space. I wanted to make a temple-like thing with this part of the town as an inspiration. I wanted to explore why, in ancient times, people had come up with a conical shape for making temples. I like to focus on the intricacies like door heights and open spaces in temples where people used to gather.

In trying to connect the old part of the city with the new, Gavankar finds herself drawn to the turning points in history that led to the diversion. “Everything changes with time, and that’s the ultimate truth of life."

This local artist delves into the nuances of language, the embedded artistry in different scripts, the textual import, place names, and names of objects.

His work on the idea of ‘temporality’ for BAT 2018 is ongoing, and here, finds itself take the form of a mixed-media sculpture made of mirrors and laterite to denote the alphabets of the word: PAST.

The image or the structure of the ‘alphabetical construct’ is a nod to the past but the mirror will reflect the ‘present’ surrounding it. The alphabet ‘S’ especially is sculpted out of laterite, creating a semblance of a flowing stream which, according to the oral history of the Old Town area, once flowed through there.

The metaphorical representation of the stream from bygone times juxtaposed with the current reflection of the space aims to give scope for contemplation on the intersection between history and memory. The viewers/onlookers will see their own reflection and become a part of the work.

Says Behera, “A project like BAT not only provides an effective platform for the younger generation of Bhubaneswar to understand the artistic-cultural dimension of their own city, it also sensitises them towards conserving and maintaining their city artefacts and heritage.”

For this site-specific installation artist who is making a floating bamboo structure on the Bindusagar lake in the Old Town, involvement of the younger generation of artists in a public art project like BAT will mean gaining concrete skills and insights into work processes. It also involves possibilities for future collaborations.

"For students, especially those from the various arts colleges who are volunteers of BAT, their involvement also means getting a sense of the place, its history and society,” he says. “This might inspire them to undertake site-specific works later in the city."

His work in Bhubaneswar on bamboo has earned him Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi award and also a Junior Fellowship by the Ministry of Culture, India.

The Bhubaneswar Art Trail is on till December 18, 2018. Log on to www.facebook.com/bhubaneswarar… to know more.