With its meaning rendered weightless from casual usage, love – the idea, the feeling, the practice – is deeply misunderstood and profoundly complex. Yet, it makes the bleakness of existence consequential: we pursue it, we are compelled by its challenges, its probability feeds hope, its fulfillment can alleviate grave wounds of time. Love is political – how we are divided from our natal landscape by war is a timeless question. Love is often underscored by sexual desire, and sex is frequently persecuted and forbidden. Love is also an aesthetic, manifesting in art through themes of longing and forfeiture. Love is maddening, in its presence and absence.

Yet love is not assigned serious scholarly attention, often dismissed as sentimental, a minor concern. Sensorium: edition {love} put this most central of human impulses at its focus to rescue the bloodless clichés that dilute its symphonic potency and distinctive wisdom. Forty leading artists and performers respond with paintings, photographs, installations, spoken word, theatrical endeavor and music to answer the many important questions about love. What is the aesthetic of love? How is love a political act? And what do we owe the ones we love?

Sensorium is an annual arts festival founded by Dattaraj V. Salgaocar and Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi and produced by the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts. It brings art from various disciplines under a single roof that allows for exchange, creativity and innovation. In our first edition, we looked into the intersection of photography, art and literature. In the second edition, Sensorium celebrates theatre, music and art, partnering with seven of India’s premier galleries and showing works from the likes of A. Ramachandran, Mithu Sen, Anju Dodiya, Roger Ballen, Rana Begum, Anita Dube among other artistic greats.

Rana Begum | No. 553 Rana Begum’s No. 553 minimalist patterns are informed by the symmetry present in Islamic architecture.

Pablo Bartholomew | Outside In & A Tale of 3 Cities The collection reveals moments from the photographer Pablo Bartholomew’s personal life. Passionate lovers. Blink. Friends. Blink. Lovers now adrift. A lingering tenderness in these portrayals where laughter turns pitiful.

Atul Bhalla | Love A Atul Bhalla’s photographs Love A, are a deliberation on the inexpressibility of love. Bhalla acts on the understated.

Anju Dodiya | The Golden Repose A black book is opened and out spirals an unending scroll like a white sash whirling across the painting. A dramatic sequence of events unfolds.

Mithu Sen | seXray Sen’s painting is one of extinction, between human communication, between man and his surroundings. But in its wretchedness, her tree grows a leaf. And humming birds flutter above.

L.N. Tallur | Balanced Diet Tallur refers to gluttony in an ecosystem mired by wealth that also dictates our most basic human necessities which include nourishment, love and desire.

Kedar Dhondu | The Blackened Garden Barks of trees squeezed by man in stark grey prints, drawings, paintings are contrasted with historical references of paradise or the promised land taken from both Western artistic reserves and archival records of old Goan landscapes.

Roger Ballen | Onlooker & Five Hands Legend goes that the photographer found a derelict house in Johannesburg, inside which no one knows what ensued. The result is the most disturbing, absurd body of photographic work, dreamlike and oddly real.

Chitra Ganesh | Untitled from Drawing from the Present A series of canvas pieces by Chitra Ganesh opens up a space for transgression as she takes the viewer into a fantastical dimension.

Mona Rai | Krishna Krishna Rai is interested in that in-between space – that tense instant between courtesy and barbarism. This is depicted in the cutting and stitching, pigmentation of the fabric and metal foil slapped on the canvas.

Praneet Soi | Angelus Novus In terracotta red, the angel is turned towards the past, his hands over his face, as he gasps in horror at the devastation being thrown at his feet. He wants to stay, but there’s a storm brewing from Heaven that thrusts him into the future.

Atul Dodiya | Rubai & Mumtaz-II Atul Dodiya’s shutter paintings are inextricably tied to the passing away of things. Rubai and Mumtaz-II express death’s inevitability.

Anita Dube | I Love You... The work is composed of harsh wire covered with soft velvet. The text are lines from a poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda known as an author of erotically charged love poems and surrealist verse.

Sharmila Samant | Kathajaal Kathajaal is a video carrying sound bytes of Goan migrants to Canada, in which Sharmila Samant interrogates notions of memory, piecing together stories collected from various individuals.

Thukral & Tagra | Pinball (Window of Opportunity) Much like these anxious characters framed inside what resemble airplane windows, about to embark on a journey to meet their potential match. Will their hopes, dreams, desires be fulfilled at the end of their journey? Is it worth the risk?

Surekha | First Sight Commenting on how social constructs divide love based on race, gender, religion, caste, viewers are shown two films playing simultaneously – one carrying visuals of romance and attraction, the other lovers falling off cliffs in ethereal peace.

Prem Sahib | Only with your lights on Only with your lights on by Prem Sahib is a steel bed with a black mattress. There is a circular opening in the bed, inside which is wedged an ashtray. The cold exterior of the structure is clinical, but is somehow softened by the burning glow of tea lights.

Richard Bartholomew | Rati Wearing a Sari & Moonlit Night From the series A Critic’s Eye, come deeply personal portraits from Richard Bartholomew’s iconic collection.

Alexander Gorlizki | This Time, This Place & We Are Intertwined A contemplative piece by Alexander Gorlizki in his familiar miniature technique. At its center and in a cloud, a regal animal-human figure is being served by a servant. Playful upon first viewing, the work becomes visceral and almost claustrophobic, like a spectacular knotting of intestines locked together.

Arpita Singh | Untitled, Untitled, Catching Fireflies, Untitled, Chasing away an animal The frailty of Singh’s subjects is countered by a sudden spontaneity of movement triggered by the catching of insects or chasing of animals. In a single gesture, Singh weaves together effortlessly the fragile with the resilient, the mundane with the everyday.

Manisha Parekh | Under the Blue This cluster of primitive yet dainty lines soaked in blue possesses the viewer with its absolute depth. The piece lingers in a perpetual dream state, either up in the sky or immersed in water.

Simryn Gill | Ink Studies (Stormy Days) Ink blotches flung on to sheets of paper form a tempestuous sea of grey, blue, black stains.

Gyan Panchal | bndus & the sieve Shaving, cleaning, polishing, painting it, Gyan Panchal shifts it from its corporeality and elevates bndus, this most mundane of objects, so familiar to the structure of our cities, to a reverent position.
A wasted dish antenna is transfigured into a sieve with visible perforations. The satellite is stained by old infestations of termites.

Elena Pereira | Leftover Love and Other Stories Extacy is a bed knitted from metal wire. A Look into a Cloud is a showpiece. Big Appetite is comprised of metal plates shattered and strewn together.

A. Ramachandran | The Monsoon Flowers A. Ramachandran’s The Monsoon Flowers is a gentle work showing off women in dance and play rejoicing at the fertile shades of the monsoon yield. The mood in the painting is dapper.

Hema Upadhyay | The Conversation Lovers are placed into picture frames. They face each other, their countenance formed by distinct black lines against a landscape of rice grains.

Aditya Pande | Dramayana The fiery embers from the metal silhouette are radiant with energy and the possibility of new beginnings as the letters light up becoming visible.

Tushar Joag | Remember you each night Remember you each night are different faces of remembrance by Tushar Joag of someone once loved, now lost. The mundane objects become metaphors, each carrying their unique sonnet.

Dhruv Malhotra | Noida Soliloquy & After Party In the still of the night, photographer Dhruv Malhotra’s compositions lend space to the nocturnal life of nature amidst an urban topography.
After Party are still images by Dhruv Malhotra exposing the leftovers of matrimonial celebrations and what remains after the fanfare of connubial festivities.

14 DECEMBER 2015

5 – 7 pm Performances by Jana Prepeluh, Atish Saha & Himanshu Suri curated by Heritage Hotel

7 pm Preview of Exhibitions

8 pm Twelfth Night by Filter Theatre in association with The Royal Shakespeare Company & supported by The British Council, India https://www.britishcouncil.in/events/twelfth-night-goa

15 DECEMBER 2015

12 pm Walk-Through of exhibitions with Anita Dube, Sharmila Samant and Mithu Sen

12.30 pm Photography workshop with Devika Daulet-Singh

18 DECEMBER 2015

7 pm The Cenere Project, screening of the Italian silent movie ‘Cenere’ featuring Eleanor Duse with live jazz soundtrack performed by Marcello Allulli, Matteo Fraboni & Giovanni Ceccarelli in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Centre, India

04 JANUARY 2016

7 pm Sunaparanta Annual Lecture by Prof. Vidya Dehejia, Columbia University

14 JANUARY 2016

7 pm Performance Lecture 'Memory Drawing' by Nikhil Chopra

17 JANUARY 2016

7 pm The Shanghvi Salon with Bharti Kher

01 FEBRUARY 2016

5 - 7 pm Performance art by Bhisaji Gadekar and Sajan Mani curated by Nikhil Chopra, Heritage Hotel

7 - 7.30 pm The Shanghvi Salon: Nikhil Chopra in conversation with Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

11 FEBRUARY 2016

7 pm The Shanghvi Salon with Anju and Atul Dodiya

12 - 14 FEBRUARY 2016

7 pm A Crossover Love Club, a participatory performance by Sanchayan Ghosh

15 FEBRUARY 2016

7 pm Jeet Thayil curates a spoken word performance with Akhil Katyal, Mithu Sen, Aditi Nagrath, Zachary Bushnell

8 pm Sensorium Closing Ceremony with The Musical Narrative on Amir Khusrau

** Schedule is subject to change. Write to info@sgcfa.org or call us on (0832) 2421311

Dattaraj and Dipti Salgaocar | Patrons
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi | Honorary Director
Isheta Salgaocar | Executive Producer
Leandré D'Souza | Exhibitions Curator
Chirag Dewan | Exhibitions Designer

Exhibitions will be open from 15 December 2015 to 15 February 2016 Monday – Saturday 11 am to 7 pm | Sunday 11 am to 6 pm

Any change in dates and timings of Performances, Talks, Lectures and other Events will be intimated through our website/facebook.
All exhibitions and events are at:
Sunaparanta – Goa Centre for the Arts
63/C-8, Near Army House, Altinho
Panjim – Goa, 403 001
(0832)2421311 | info@sgcfa.org