It is the season of festivity, the Christmas spirit engulfs despite our struggles with (demonetisation) getting patient enduring long queues, which occasionally proves redundant. As we prepare to welcome the New Year we also approach our 100th issue set for January. Feeling celebratory we devote this issue to the various Art & culture Fairs & Biennales that are getting increasingly better and touching upon aspired standards.

Contemporary art festivals have much to offer. They display artists at an international level, and giving them and their works the cultural consecration to global art markets. Offering a base for international networking by its artists, curators, gallerists etc and providing a paramount platform fror bringing it all closer to society/ public. And, alongside introduce local cultures to a global audience. Art /Cultural fairs not only provide ideal spaces to experiment with variation in the existing work types, thereby reinforcing those practices but also provide for radical departures and innovations that confirm the status of such contemporary art as cutting edge.

We begin with the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa. The programming will be dispersed across a mix of indoor and outdoor locations along the picturesque waterfront of Panjim. The venues range from historic Portuguese structures to modernist buildings. Urban interventions in parks and public art projects will transform the city into a vibrant and open cultural space. A curtain raiser by Lina Vincent Sunish.

Then we have Rajesh Punj highlighting the Colombo Biennale with special emphasis on the performance Colombo In Colombo led by the artist Boclé as a laboured love of cooking, with the added intention of influencing people of various cultures across continents to engage in a series of interrelated conversations as the basis for a conference that draws attention to the coloniality of the cuisine and its individual ingredients.

Further on Biennales, Aparna Roy Baliga is in conversation with Dr. Jayaram Poduval the director of the Fine Arts section of Vadfest, The Art Fest in Vadodara and Dr. Kiran Shinde brings us an indepth overview on the upcoming 3rd Edition of the Pune Biennale. H.A. Anil Kumar gives us great insight into the journey of the veteran artist K Venkatappa who had taken up the vow of aparigrahavrata (not being indebted to anything or anybody, unnecessarily). The only Karnataka government museum for modern art is named after him (Venkatappa Chitrashala) and that is where most of the Kala Melas of Karnataka have taken place. Hope you enjoy …Happy Reading!

Siddhartha Tagore