Six week long Indian art and culture festival to begin in US

New York: "India in Focus", a six-week long Indian art and culture festival is set to begin in the US city of Pittsburgh from September 25, a media report said.

About 2.6 million Indian immigrants in the US would be able to take part in the festival that is set to be hosted at Gallery Crawl, Pittsburgh City Paper reported on Wednesday.

The Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly showcase of art and entertainment in which events take place at a variety of galleries and spaces.

The festival would open with a big street party with Indian origin-New York-based DJ Rekha, known for her distinct style of merging bhangra and bollywood sounds with electronic dance music.

It is said to feature five visual-art exhibitions. Indian-origin Briton Hetain Patel is said to be making his debut with his work "At Home" at the Wood Street Galleries.

Patel uses humour and pop culture in the form of videos and photographs to explore identity formation for people with marginalised identities.

At the same venue, photographer Nandini Valli Muthiah would be displaying her three photographic series that place traditional Indian cultural icons in contemporary settings.

Apart from that, Indian artists Silpa Gupta, Surabhi Saraf, Sumakshi Singh and Avinash Veeraraghavan would be displaying their talents using new media to showcase traditional Indian culture.

Photographer Gauri Gill and painter Sarika Goulatia are said to be presenting their documentation at 709 Penn Gallery.

Banglagore-based Nrityagram Dance Ensemble would perform on October 3 while Britain-based Indian classical dance group Aakash Odedra company are set to perform on November 6 at the Byham Theater.

Apart from art and dance, theatre artists are said to be performing plays from October 15-17. These artists include Canada-born playwright Ravi Jain, Indian Ink Theatre and India's Tram Theatre company.

Classical tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain is set to team up with the English jazz bassist Dave Holland and the eight-member SF-Jazz collective to perform at the festival.

(with inputs from IANS)