BySukant Deepak

January 26, 2022 (IANSlife) The Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA), in collaboration with the Art & Heritage Foundation, is all set for the fourth edition of the CIMA Awards to be held on February 5 at the Taj Bengal in Kolkata. Launched in 2014–2015, the CIMA Awards recognise and honour excellence in the visual arts.

The awards aim to showcase promising young artists in the country and provide a platform for several talented new artists who have gone on to establish a name for themselves in the art world. 

Seeking to bridge the gap between urban and rural India, the prestigious awards are open to all artists between the ages of 25 and 45 years old—trained as well as self-taught—and cover paintings, sculptures, graphics, and emerging new media such as video art, installations, art performance, graphic novels, and digital art.

Since its inception, the CIMA Awards have offered a platform for young artists to showcase their works, enabling many to successfully enter the gallery, museum, exhibition, and residency circuits in India and abroad. The winner of the CIMA Awards receives 5 lakh, a trophy, and a solo show. The first and second runners-up receive 3 lakh and 2 lakh, respectively, along with a trophy. Additionally, there are two Special Jury Awards of 1 lakh and a trophy each, two Special Mention Awards of 50,000 and a trophy each, four Merit Awards of 25,000 each, and a Director’s Award of 20,000.

A two-tiered jury system, consisting of a Preliminary Jury and a Final Jury, selects the works. Members of the jury strive to acknowledge brilliance, particularly in the singularity of vision, via knowledge-based appreciation of the art and artist. The artists’ identities are not divulged to facilitate fair and objective evaluation.

The Preliminary Jury, which included Dr Shreyasi Chatterjee, Samir Aich, Chhatrapati Dutta, Veena Bhargava, Pankaj Panwar, Tapas Biswas, Akku, Ajit Seal, Ramendranath Kastha, and Aveek Mukherjee, selected 180 artworks from around the country for the final round this year.

"The CIMA Awards are designed to give artists from all over the country a fair, open, and accessible forum to showcase their work—exciting new voices who would otherwise find it difficult, if not impossible, to do so." Almost 200 artists are given the opportunity to meet and present their work to the doyens of the Indian art scene at each edition of the CIMA Awards. "Our notion that these immensely brilliant artists would have gone unknown without CIMA Awards continues to excite us and has enabled us make this happen even in the thick of the pandemic," said Rakhi Sarkar, CIMA's Director.

(This article is website exclusive and cannot be reproduced without the permission of IANSlife)

Sukant Deepak can be contacted at sukant.d@ians.in