CIMA AWARDS 2019: An Ode to the budding brilliance

Recognising the talents and facilitating their journey is all the CIMA award is about, along with a humble attempt to bridge the aspirants and the society. Almost 160 artists have taken part in this movement, exhibited and showcased their thought process across different venues of the cultural capital of the country, Kolkata. In an attempt to weave art as the part of regular lives, CIMA had opted for some unconventional sites, starting from a garage to an unused space of an abandoned theatre. The showcased object in an atypical space and milieu had opened up a plethora of neoteric connotations through de-contextualising and re-contextualising art objects. In this third edition, the movement has added a new dimension as it reached Delhi to rope in a larger audience. In this initiative, Ashoka University, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, The Aga Khan Foundation, The Raza Foundation and many others have played a pivotal role. Representing the quintessence of contemporary Indian art scenario with diverse social, cultural, economic diversity, the participating artists attesting to different schools, cast and creed, trained or self-taught had come to one single platform.

Along with promoting and facilitating the budding brilliance across the nation, CIMA has taken a step further to sustain the traditional, tribal, indigenous art practices too, and integrate them into the mainstream, invoking a movement in term of perceiving, acknowledging and exalting arts. The art movement endeavoured to pulverize the distinction between privileged and underprivileged by ignoring prerogatives and authority and thus blurring the barriers between creative aspirations and attainment, which is the pressing priority of contemporary art scenario.