Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) 2024, South Asia’s largest interdisciplinary cultural event, unveiled its curatorial team for the ninth edition, set to take place in Panaji from December 15 to December 22. The festival’s latest edition will also introduce an AI Lab, serving as an incubation hub for artists exploring technology and regenerative art to shape a novel artistic expression.
The team of curators is tasked with investigating the possibilities of marrying varied art forms together, pushing their creative boundaries and bringing inclusivity and diversity to the heart of their curatorial ideation.
In addition to this, SAF plans to strengthen community engagement and enhance accessibility. Dedicated programming will foster connections among artists, forging lasting relationships and partnerships to enrich the arts ecosystem collaboratively. Moreover, the Festival will also add a few new venues that promise to enhance the experience of engaging and viewing art.
SAF is arguably the world’s first interdisciplinary festival that spans across the performing, visual and culinary arts, and craft. This year, the panel of distinguished curators presents some familiar names along with new additions, who become part of its all-encompassing and growing repository of creative minds. Except for Culinary Arts, two curators have been selected for each discipline, all of whom will work with the focus on having a “larger impact” on communities and societies through their projects. The 2024 edition, will be the ninth edition of the Festival, of which two were digitally hosted in the years 2020 and 2021, respectively.
Veeranganakumari Solanki returns as curator for Visual Arts, joined by the artist duo Thukral & Tagra, renowned for their innovative exploration of socio-economic themes. It marks their debut curatorial role at the Festival.
Renowned for his tabla skills and innovative fusion music, Bickram Ghosh returns as Music curator alongside Zubin Balaporia, who curated three special projects in the 2023 edition.
Helming the Theatre section are Quasar Thakore Padamsee and Sankar Venkateswaran. Padamsee, with two prior editions under his belt, joins forces with Venkateswaran, who contributed to the Theatre at Home section in 2018. Culinary Arts, a Festival mainstay, will feature Elizabeth Yorke and Anusha Murthy of Edible Issues, known for their expertise in sustainable food systems, returning after their involvement in the 2022 and 2023 editions.
Sandeep Sangaru and Kristine Michael will curate the Craft section, with Sangaru emphasising sustainability in Ladakh and Michael focusing on ceramics and glass. Geeta Chandran and Jayachandran Palazhy of Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts will curate Dance. Salil Chaturvedi, a writer, poet, and disability campaigner, will address accessibility improvements at the Festival.
“We welcome the 2024 curators on board to co-create and explore the possibilities of investigating how varied forms of art can come together. The Festival offers them absolute support to push their creative boundaries and showcase projects they might have always wanted to develop but never found support. At Serendipity, we believe art holds immense power to have an impact on how people behave and think. And through inventive programming and curation, we can initiate conversations that may have a larger impact on people,” said Sunil Kant Munjal, Founder Patron of the Serendipity Arts Foundation.
Along with this, Serendipity Arts, a non-profit for the development of arts and culture in the country and the South Asian region, has also announced its series of annual grants that are aimed at supporting young, emerging and distinct voices from diverse disciplines to strengthen and nurture the cultural ecosystem of South Asia.
Serendipity Arts is offering nine grants in research and practice ranging in disciplines with a broader aim of using the arts as a means to impact education, social initiatives, and community development programmes, while exploring interdisciplinarity between the arts to better understand the shared histories of the subcontinent.
These grants are: Public Art Grant, Independent Music Production Grant, Enduring Traditions Grants, Handmade Heritage Grant, Craft Design and Development Grant, Folk Arts Mentorship Grant, Arts Journalism Grant, Food Matters Grant, and Serendipity Arles Grant 2023 -24. An Open Call for most of these grants will be announced on social media.
Besides, the Foundation’s staple residency Serendipity Arts Residency, initiatives and partnerships like British Council x Serendipity Arts: City as Stage, Moving Library, RCA x SAF Senior Artist Residency, B-Side, Serendipity Out and About, and writing initiatives Write | Art | Connect and Projects/ Processes 2024 have also been announced. Additionally, SAF will also be launching the Delhi edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival in October.
“We are excited about having a year-long programming, grants and initiatives calendar in 2024 to nurture creative spaces for artists across disciplines to meet, engage and develop projects that are interdisciplinary in nature and form. Additionally, the focus of the Festival and the Foundation this year is to build long-term partnerships and forge unique engagements with all stakeholders for fostering a sustainable, vibrant, and inclusive arts ecosystem,” said Smriti Rajgarhia, Director, Serendipity Arts Foundation & Festival.
