Visiting IIT Powai is what I look forward to most, it’s one of my most cherished times spent on a campus, where the paths are covered with a beautiful canopy of trees, a beautifully laid out campus with bright, shining young minds.
During KGAF 2020, I had the opportunity to interact with IDC students and later common interests brought me here to interact with a few professor friends. Always enriching and positive. And I am thrilled to be invited to collaborate and mentor for Mood Indigo 2023, IIT Powai. Am so looking forward to brainstorming and interacting with some of the brightest young minds. After a couple of long interviewing and brainstorming sessions with the MI heads, I received an invite to collaborate for MI 2023, which I consider, an honour. It’s amazing how much I get to learn from them and it’s invigorating to level, debate, and explore together. I am thrilled. College campus and student-led festivals have an energy that is infectious as well as exhilarating.
Mood Indigo, the renowned cultural fest of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, stands as Asia's largest college celebration. With a storied history of 52 years, Mood Indigo unites global cultures on one stage, fostering exchange and appreciation. The festival draws over 146,000 attendees annually, offering an array of events and hosting 220 plus international artists from 25 plus countries.
Functioning as a student-led initiative, its mission is to present diverse global cultures to a youthful audience. Over time, Mood Indigo has seamlessly integrated mainstream and avant-garde genres from both India and abroad, solidifying its status as a premier, meticulously executed college cultural festival in Asia.
Notably, Mood Indigo has attracted international artists to craft life-sized installations and curate art exhibitions from around the world. These exhibitions have earned recognition in prestigious record books such as the Guinness Book of World Records and the Limca Book of Records. The idea is to develop the project with collaborative workshops and venues with other colleges with different disciplines. Being passionate about cross-disciplinary practices is what I am most excited about.
IIT Powai boasts the best engineering, technology, and design minds to work with different architecture, fine art and crafts, and design colleges to explore and innovate for a festival the students for students and the world to see.
The Indigo Art Project aims to create a space for artistic exchange, celebrate diverse ideologies, and provide a platform for emerging artists like me to learn, grow, and showcase their work.
With a steadfast vision for the long term, the Indigo Art Project aspires to weave a vibrant tapestry of artistic unity across India. Beyond its immediate impact, the project envisions fostering an inclusive community that embraces art galleries, students, and diverse entities. This collective journey is driven by a simple yet powerful ethos – to celebrate the pure love for art and craft something exquisitely beautiful, unencumbered by prerequisites or limitations.
In this partnership, they envision crafting a collection of installations by collaborating with other design colleges and students from the Indigo Art Project. These captivating installations will find their place in diverse venues, nurturing an energetic art community and promoting a spirit of shared endeavor within our artistic circle. Their confidence in this venture lies in the belief that by coming together, they can present students with an exceptional educational journey, granting them access to fresh dimensions of art, and enriched valuable insights.
As a non-profit student organisation, they face the challenge of managing the logistical and related expenses associated with these installations. Despite this obstacle, their dedication remains unwavering, and they are actively seeking avenues to address this concern.
(Sonal Motla is an art curator and Director at Rachna Sansad, working towards issues on art education, craft and design as a visiting faculty with a few educational institutions like NIFT Mumbai, among others. Send your feedback to: sonal25fpj@gmail.com)
