Chennai to host Madras Art Weekend, a three-day long celebration of art

In a first, Madras Art Weekend, a curated three-day long event for the arts, celebrates the visual art culture of Chennai through exhibitions, panel discussions and a workshop

Madras is not alien to the arts. While one would traditionally associate the city’s sensibilities to the classical performing arts, the role it plays in the country’s visual art culture is seminal — be it the legacy of the Madras Art Movement, Cholamandal Artist’s Village, or the influential Government College of Fine Arts.

But a movement fitting to the city’s position in the art world and market, among the community is yet to be realised.

The maiden edition of Madras Art Weekend (MAW), by city-based The International Foundation for the Arts, hopes to kickstart this conversation.

With curated walkthroughs, exhibitions, panel discussions and a workshop, Madras Art Weekend hopes to create a healthy ecosystem for the art fraternity: be it through a showcase of works by Madras Masters or a panel discussion on the intersection of art and design. 

This weekend has been in the making for at least two years. Two years that entailed getting people on board, going for other such weekends across cities, and getting different ideas and perspectives.

“I feel like our artists don’t get representation across the board, especially in other cities and even in India Art Fair,” says Upasana.

While cities like Mumbai are familiar with gallery weekends and art walks, Chennai is still novel to this idea. Upasana explains, “We didn’t want to specifically call this a gallery weekend. It’s more of an art weekend with interaction with the arts. We wanted to be more generic towards art and artists in the city.”