Delhi Art Week: Revitalising art scene in Delhi

One of the artworks displayed at Dhoomimal Gallery, Connaught Place (MIG photos/Palak Chawla)

On the off-chance you enter Dhoomimal Gallery located in Connaught Place, one painting, Our Politicians (facing the camera), created by BC Sanyal is sure to grab your attention due to its quirky yet authentic portrayal of Indian politicians of the 1960s. One of four politicians in the painting resembles the first prime minister of independent India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru.

Dhoomimal Gallery is currently featuring the works of acclaimed yet uncelebrated maestros like BC Sanyal, Sailoz Mookherjee, KS Kulkarni, Jagdish Swaminathan, Satish Gujral and Ram Kumar, all members of Delhi Shilpi Chakra, a network of artists, as part of the Delhi Art Week.

A maiden initiative launched for the very purpose of raising awareness and creating a strong presence of art within the capital, Delhi Art Week has managed to bring together several public and private art institutions all across Delhi to help refocus attention on.

The initiative which commenced on April 3,2021,has collaborated with 37 galleries, four institutions and two museums with around 50 exhibitions featuring almost 250 artists. “We felt the need to establish an event like the Delhi Art Week because we noticed there was a dearth of an initiative that binds together all visual arts-related activities in the city for a sustained period of time. The Delhi Art Week fills that gap,” says one of the co-organisers.

A BC Sanyal creation featured in Dhoomimal Gallery, Connaught Place (MIG photos/Palak Chawla)

While the line up for the week includes solos as well as curated projects, in-person interactive sessions, virtual workshops and walkthroughs have also been planned. Some of the noteworthy highlights include, Arpita Singh’s Homeward at Vadhera Art Gallery, the works of artists who were part of the collective Delhi Shilpi Chikra displayed at Dhoomimal Gallery and at Latitude 28, a group of contemporary artists drawing attention to “perspectives on the unprecedented rate of human development”.

In its first edition, DAW’s primary focus is to create an online platform to facilitate information about all visual-art activities across the capital and help art enthusiasts seamlessly navigate through them. For the same purpose, the capital has been divided into four art zones, with Dhoomimal Gallery in Connaught Place at the north and Art Incept by Art Pilgrim in Chhatarpur in the south for a week.

“We realise that most of the galleries were positioned in South Delhi. So we divided it into four zones so that it would help people, make it easier for them to navigate if they wanted to visit any of them,” the co-organiser tells Media India Group.

With the art industry already paralysed due to the ongoing pandemic, this initiative is an attempt to encourage art aficionados to once again engage with galleries while adapting to ‘new normal’. The organisers say that while they are taking cognisance of the situation of the pandemic, but because of DAW’s staggered programming which is spread out across four zones of the city, they would be able to handle the visitors to the galleries, museums, and institutions, while observing safety protocols, such as the compulsory wearing of facemasks, maintaining social distancing, and the use of sanitisers at all locations.

The organisers say that the response has been very positive, with several sales and a buzz among art enthusiasts in the city.