Love has an address this December: The Sensorium in Goa

Panaji: If you are in search of love, this is the address to be if you are in Goa this December: Sunaparanta, Goa Centre for the Arts, located in Panaji’s Tony Altinho area. The Centre, housed in a quaint Portuguese villa, hosts the second edition of Sensorium, an annual arts festival of art, literature, music and theatre, where, spread over two months. It is a virtual constellation of Indian and international contemporary visual artists from the star stables of Nature Morte, Photoink, Vadehra Art Gallery, Lakeeren Gallery, Experimenter and Jhaveri Contemporary which will descend from 15 December, 2015 to 16 February, 2016. [caption id=“attachment_2544684” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Sensorium will focus on the theme of love.[/caption] In its 2015 edition, Sensorium will deliberate on the universal yet misunderstood and underrated theme of love, which, according to the festival’s Exhibition’s curator Leandre D’Souza, is also a sentiment taken for granted. “Love is something that, as humans, we take for granted. In our present times, it is severely fractured and lacking. This is visible in our relations with each other, in how we are conditioned to love by societal constraints, in our extreme political situations of terror/war/uncertainty,” D’Souza told Firstpost. The second edition of Sensorium, she said, gives love, something that has become irrelevant, central focus. “We explore love through various trajectories namely the divine, relational and loss. This is depicted in the tapestry of works by 40 of the country’s finest and most prominent artists,” she added. Sensorium, according to the event’s organisers, responds to the idea of love in its various avatars, a visual spiral that takes audiences along a beautiful, unpredictable, extraordinary, painful, frightful journey. Sensorium’s LOVE edition features top artistes like Anju and Atul Dodiya, Hema Upadhyay, Praneet Soi, A Ramachandran, Rameshwar Broota, Tushar Joag, Atul Bhalla, LN Tallur, Aditya Pande, Chitra Ganesh, Anita Dube, Sharmila Samant, Elena Pereira, Sanchayan Ghosh, Gyan Panchal, Alexander Gorlizki, Rana Begum among others. The festival will also host collateral events as part of its program, like conversations with artistes anchored by Siddharth Shanghvi, a lecture by Columbia University’s Prof Vidya Dehejia, rendition of the ‘The Cenere Project’ by Italian musicians Allulli, Ceccarelli and the Fraboni Trio in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Centre and the performance of Shakespeare’s (what is love without Shakespeare) Twelfth Night by the UK’s acclaimed Filter Theater Group, in partnership with the British Council. The performance art chapters for Sensorium is being curated by globally feted performance artist Nikhil Chopra (along with Madhavi Gore and Romain Loustau all of the Heritage Hotel). “The idea behind Sensorium is to bring visual arts, performance, music, drama, dance to a wider audience. At Sunaparanta, the kind of people we attract and generate is unprecedented and also one of the reasons behind our visual arts focus this year. The aim is to provide access to contemporary arts practice through paintings, installations, performance, participatory works and also to nurture and engage with a widening critical audience within Goa,” D’Souza further said. Executive producer of event, Isheta Salgaocar, said that despite being a small state, Goa already has a flourishing art scene and with gigs like Sensorium, it would soon be a force to reckon with. “Goa is definitely an emerging destination for the arts whether it is the access to artists and art, or the sea of talent that is coming to Goa to practice and develop their arts and finding homes within the state,” she said. Last year’s edition of Sensorium featured artistes like Dayanita Singh, Jeet Thayil, Fausto Giaccone, Anusha Yadav, Sooni Taraporewala and lectures by Jitish Kallat, Ritesh Batra and others, with celebrated historian and author William Dalrymple delivering the event;s annual lecture. (The writer is the Goa correspondent for the Indo-Asian News Service.)