Durga Puja pandals | When Kolkata rivals the Venice Biennale

Kolkata’s pujo pandals go beyond rituals and religion to outshine global art events such as Documenta with their scale, creativity and labour

Every year, during Durga Puja, nearly three crore people visit Kolkata’s pandals — up for just five days. But now, the evolving nature of public art during this season is catching the attention of the art cognoscenti, rivalling any of the big art shows around the world.

Over the last decade, more and more contemporary artists have been involved in conceptualising, designing, and orchestrating massive installations that have gone far beyond conventional pujo pandals. An explosion of creativity post-COVID has only boosted this vernacular vocabulary.

As a novice pandal-hopper, I was recently part of a small preview group, which included art aficionados Lekha Poddar (of Devi Art Foundation), Saloni Doshi (founder, Space 118), artists Sakshi Gupta and Suhasini Kejriwal, and a few diplomats — invited by my artist friend Sayntan Maitra. Over three evenings, we visited intricately-crafted pavilions, met the artists, artisans and technicians behind the installations, and even caught a show by itinerant puppeteers in the intimacy of a private courtyard.

A 300-year-old tradition, pandals were originally smaller community-driven initiatives, funded by chanda or donations from residents of a locality to welcome goddess Durga during Navaratri. But with the festivities being both a religious and a cultural event, they became platforms for artists to experiment — from subversive themes to ideas of activism, history and craft. Today, with AI and new media technology, these statements have gotten that much bigger.

Kolkata alone has 4,000 pandals, and some of these surpass what I’ve seen in the global meccas of art such as the Venice Biennale. Poddar echoed the sentiment: “It is better than Documenta [in Germany] or the biennales. It is the epitome of creativity.” The artists use sound, light, art and performance to guide the public around the installations. Picking themes that are current and topical also give people fresh ideas to ponder. Here are a few that caught our eye:

While pandals invoke religious fervour, their art is secular and unique. One of the most powerful ones of 2024 was by artist Bhabatosh Sutar on the threat to the Constitution of India. Spread over 15,000 sq. ft. on two sides of the street, black-and-white portraits with razor blades in their mouths — set against slogans about the rights of the people — led visitors to a 30-foot sculpture of an open book of the Constitution.

Cut-outs in the wood and papier-mâché structure made room for people to stand and recite poems of anguish and introspection in the presence of a multi-armed Durga.