It is going to be a hectic fortnight of November for the culturally inclined in Hyderabad, as a series of events have been lined up by multiple organisations in multiple locations.
Art hub
“We want Hyderabad and Telangana to emerge as an art and cultural hub of the country and these kinds of events and busy schedule will help us in that,” said Mamidi Harikrishna, Director of Culture, Telangana government. The State’s willingness to make this push can be seen from the fact that all the big art and cultural events are being bankrolled by the Telangana government.
The Hyderabad Art Festival will begin from November 1 and will go on till November 8. All the events of the eight-day art fest, where artists from three countries including Japan, Australia and France are participating will be held at the State Gallery of Art.
“This is part of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of Hyderabad Art Society which began in 1941 and legendary artists like MF Husaain, Gaitonde, Bendre, Hebbar and a host of other brilliant artists were part of it,” said Ramana Reddy of HAS. The art fest has an esoteric line up of events ranging from art talks and interactive sessions to music performances.
While the Hyderabad Art Festival is a single-location event, St-Art Hyderabad is a multi-venue splash of colours in open air spaces like Necklace Road and Maktha where citizens can watch massive paintings come alive in front of them.
Public painting projects
Between November 1 and 12, several locations on Necklace Road will see murals, installations, screenings and talks on all the days. Backed by KrishnaKriti Foundation and Art @ Telangana, one of the keenly awaited public painting projects is the one drawn by 10 Telangana-based artists.
“As part of the event we are also having Telangana Kala Mela on November 5 to 6 at Necklace Road. We will have folk artistes’ performances, in addition, visitors will be able to see Nakashi and Nirmal paintings being created by artists,” informed well-known artist Laxman Aelay.
Near simultaneously, the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Foundation is staging its annual festival from November 3 to 12. The curtains go up for the theatre festival with Tom Alter’s Dr. Khanna on November 3 and come down with Hanumantha Rao’s Nayakaralu Nagamma on November 12.
In the midst of the busy cultural calendar is the three-day Confluence of Art and Soul event at CCRT which has a line up of musical recitals, dance performances and stage shows. In addition to other performances, November 4 will see the Sutradhar’s Biryani aur Haleem , November 5 Ghazal recital by Anjali Gopalakrishnan and November 6 will see Ananda Shankar Jayant’s Kavyanjali .
