Come September, the Pujo skies beckon a festive atmosphere all around town. Clouds clear up, the sun shines through, and there’s lived art in mandaps around town; site-specific installations that breathe life as scores throng to them. In gallery spaces this September, there is a centennial retrospective of the iconic Somnath Hore, a play that places Ravana as a product of social evils and a group show that dwells on monochrome. In mandaps, as in art spaces, the buzzword remains variety.  

100 Years of Somnath Hore
Aaakar Prakar, till October 15  

Aakar Prakar presents 100 Years of Somnath Hore, a centenary retrospective of the iconic printmaker, painter and sculptor. Hore’s association with the Communist Party and his personal political beliefs deeply influenced his imagery, as did his lived experience through some of the most turbulent times in the country, like the Bengal Famine and the pre-Independence struggle. 

The centenary show at Aakar Prakar shwocases Hore’s unique printmaking work of white-on-white pulp prints, popularly referred to as the ‘Wounds’ series, drawings done in masterfully swift strokes of ink & brushwork, minimalist woodcuts and the poetic flow of his bronze sculptures. 

‘Co-Existence’, group show
Birla Academy of Art & Culture, till September 11

Curator Dolly Dabriwal will host ‘Co-Existence’, a group show featuring the works of over 45 traditional and emerging artists, at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture. The show will feature works that play on subject of light and darkness, in a wide range of media, from etching to wood carvings to acrylic to pen-and-ink and more. 

Room Full Of Mirrors, Probir Gupta
Kolkata Centre for Creativity; till September 30 

Room Full of Mirrors by Probir Gupta aims to reflect the unrest and rapid social changes that signify these modern times; a metaphor of the society we live in, so to speak. Enormous in scale, Gupta’s narrative on canvas draws from his youth, a time when the Naxalite movement was at its peak in the early 1970s. His work is troubling, but never repentant. 

KCC Arts lab 7.0: Ravan Reloaded
Kolkata Centre for Creativity, 1^st floor, September 11; 6.30pm

Written, designed and directed by Debasish, Ravan Reloaded showcases Ravan to be a social construction, and not someone solely evil from the beginning. 

‘Neither a re-telling nor a reconstruction’ of the Ramayana, Debasish’s Ravan play discusses the all-powerful figure of Ravan and how his power is ‘nothing but the result of a flawed social structure’. In the play, the protagonist is an aspiring actor who travels all the way to Mumbai from his rural home in Ayodhya to pursue his dream of making a mark in Bollywood. As a son of a Raamleela performer, he disdains the old acting methods and wants to imbibe new styles. The big bad city is harsh on him – and the artiste turns into a criminal.

An outcome of KCC’s ‘Theatre Lab’, which included a week-long site-specific theatre practice, the play will feature ten actors chosen from a rigorous audition process across the state. 

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