Kolkata Art Festival To Project India's Richness, Begins February 4

In an attempt to promote the varied Indian arts, Kolkata will host the CIMA-Awards and the Kolkata Arts Festival in February next year.

The organisers say that the one month-long festival, beginning February 4, will provide an opportunity to discover genuine talent in India, especially beyond the cities with a special focus on eastern India.

"In the second edition of the Centre of International Modern Art or CIMA Awards people from across the world will converge in Kolkata and we are partnering with different agencies to organise this festival, the first of its kind in Kolkata that will serve as a platform for creative minds across the world to meet," CIMA director Rakhi Sarkar told reporters.

Prominent names in the field of Art including Dr Chris Dercon, former Director of the Tate Modern and Jay Levenson, Director of International Programmes, MoMA, New York will participate in discussions in the festival.

Dr Swapan Chakraborty, Professor and Secretary and Curator of Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata, said the festival will provide an opportunity for creative people to show their talents. 

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"I am absolutely certain that there is no dearth of talent in eastern India. CIMA Awards and the Kolkata Arts Festival is about recognising that immense talent," he said. 

IIT Kharagpur will also be a part of the art festival. The engineering institute will present the Science and Heritage Initiative, SandHI, which is envisaged as a confluence of science and technology with culture, at the art festival.

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"This is the attitudinal change that brings an institute of technology into a festival of art," Professor Joy Sen of IIT-Kharagpur said.