Shuvaprasanna's annual art fair, cultural fest on its way

Arts Acre Foundation announced on Wednesday the second edition of its annual festival – Art Haat, 2017 – organized in association with Emami Art is going to be held at the Arts Acre Museum of Bengal Modern Art and International Centre for Creativity and Cultural Vision at Rajarhat from November 11 to 14. Eminent artist, Shuvaprasanna, acclaimed artists, Himmat Shah and Prabhakar Kolte, filmmaker, Gautam Ghose and prominent artists from Germany were present at the inauguration.

This year, the majority of the stalls at the Art Haat festival are being given to the emerging artists who are full-time practitioners of fine arts like painting and sculpture while some stalls are reserved for various handicrafts. Besides the fair, there will be performances at the open-air amphitheatre every evening during this four-day event. Last year, it was a mix of Baul and other forms of folk music like Rainbenshe, Chau, and traditional dance of Purulia and performances by Belgian Bluegrass band named Louvat Brothers.

This year there will be a performance by Folks of Bengal – a folk band performing songs and instrumental, folk songs by Swapan Basu, Raibenshe – traditional acrobatic dance form of Bengal, Chau – Dance form of Purulia and contemporary dance performance by Bittu Mondal and group.

Present on the occasion, Shuvaprasanna said, "This is the second edition of Art Haat and I am extremely hopeful about its success. Last year, it was an interesting spread of experience. We have extremely talented artists across the city and state who have participated in this year's art fair and festival and it is going to be big this year. From the last year's success, we have been inspired to increase the number of stalls to 65 against last year's 55. We will continue to hold this festival to exhibit the artistic excellence of our city and the country".

Different forms and types of affordable painting, sculpture, folk art, crafts, organic clothes, designer jewellery and handloom products would be exhibited at this unique fair. "The idea is to enable every family to carry back a piece of art with them. We have also tried to offer each artist and artisan an inexpensive platform for selling their creations", added Shuvaprasanna. This year, the fair also offers delectable food items from K C Das, Biskfarm and Mukhorochak. They will be offering their delicacies besides food from the in-house cafeteria. There will also be stalls selling popular street foods in the festival.

Arts Acre is the brainchild of the renowned artist Shuvaprasanna which has developed into a sprawling facility for fine arts. It is a self-contained mini-city for artists and art lovers providing world-class facilities for creating a model platform for the practice and propagation of art, craft and culture.