Artworks displayed during the inaugural Bengal Biennale in 2024 across Kolkata and Santiniketan (Photos: Bengal Biennale)
The Bengal Biennale is set to return for its second edition from November 25 to January 2, 2027, with exhibitions and artistic practices to be organised at several venues in Kolkata and Santiniketan.
In a press statement, the organisers of Bengal Biennale, say that this year’s curatorial framework, Banalata, takes its name from a 1942 Bengali poem Banalata Sen penned by Jibanananda Das and the ecology of wild forest vines. The theme uses subterranean worlds, buried histories, entanglement, resistance and collective survival as starting points for exploring art and cultural practices.
The statement adds that the Gameplan Foundation was founded by Jeet and Malavika Banerjee and that the biennale is co-curated by Chander Haat, an artist collective and community space in Sarsuna, Kolkata, and independent curator and researcher Ritika Biswas.
The organisers say that Banalata will unfold at a range of sites, including a former prison, old houses and a wild park in Kolkata and Santiniketan. These locations will be treated not merely as exhibition venues but as spaces connected to ecology, memory and artistic practices.
The participating venues in Santiniketan include Nandan Art Museum & Gallery, Tokaroun, Santiniketan Society of Visual Art & Design, Arthshila, Sculpture Park, Somnath Hore Studio and Krittika Arts Space.
In Kolkata, the biennale will be hosted at the Alipore Museum, the Indian Museum, TRI Art & Culture, Lalit Kala Akademi, the Red Bari, the Dockyard Co and the Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC). KCC will also host the Bengal Biennale’s inaugural Emerging Artists Open Call.
Chander Haat
According to the statement, the biennale aims to connect Kolkata and Santiniketan while recognising that the two centres have distinct cultural identities and ecosystems. It will also position Bengal as a hub for artistic practices extending beyond the state and India.
“We believe that art cannot be fragmented but is a medium to build relationships. Our Banalata emerges from within the entanglement of these relationships, a living space in which we can coexist,” says Haat.
Ritika Biswas
“I envision the second Bengal Biennale as a slightly strange, slightly dissonant, slightly dark ecology which embraces the full spectrum of being alive in and to a burning world,” says Biswas.
“Banalata foregrounds emotion, rest and poetics as ways to examine the systems and selves within which people are entangled, while creating new forms of kinship and solidarity across Bengal and beyond,” adds Biswas.
Jeet Banerjee
The statement adds that the inaugural edition of the Bengal Biennale in 2024 attracted visitors across more than 25 venues in Kolkata and Santiniketan and featured over 100 artists. The second edition will continue the multi-venue format, connecting established cultural institutions, historic sites, artist-led spaces and alternative locations.
Malavika Banerjee
“The more polarised our world seems, the more urgent is the need to acknowledge the lessons of resilience that nature offers us. If we wish to learn from it. The unseen entanglements that unite us, the neurons that make us feel for each other, and the hope that green shoots hold out to us, Bengal Biennale’s Banalata was born, and grew from these thoughts,” say Jeet and Malavika Banerjee.
