Asian Paints, St+art turn Ballygunge into Kolkata’s living art district

KOLKATA: Asian Paints, in partnership with the St+art India Foundation, has unveiled St+art Kolkata Festival 2025–26, transforming Ballygunge into a canvas for public art, conversation and everyday creativity through a city-scale initiative titled ADDA: the third space.

Rooted in Kolkata’s long-standing adda and rowak culture, the festival reimagines public spaces as shared “third spaces”: neither home nor street alone, but places of connection, pause and belonging. The project unfolds through a series of outdoor art interventions across south Kolkata, alongside an indoor exhibition at TRI Art & Culture Centre.

At the heart of the festival is the Colour Corridor, an immersive passageway created by Sayan Mukherjee and inspired by Asian Paints’ Chromacosm. Designed as a sensorial welcome zone, it wraps visitors in colour, light and movement, inviting them to slow down and experience art as part of daily life. A specially written Bengali poem, voiced in the accompanying film, adds a lyrical tribute to the city’s pulse, while a typographic façade by street artist Khatra and augmented reality elements extend the experience across TRI’s premises.

Inside TRI Art & Culture Centre, an exhibition featuring works by ten artists blurs the boundary between private and public life. Familiar domestic spaces are reimagined: a bed becomes a gathering spot, a kitchen evokes memory through scent: using colour, texture, sound and smell to explore how connection and belonging are shaped in contemporary cities.

The Ballygunge project builds on Asian Paints’ long-running collaboration with St+art India Foundation, guided by the ethos of Art For All. Previous public art districts in Lodhi, Mahim and other neighbourhoods have similarly sought to pull art out of galleries and into the street, turning overlooked corners into places for collective experience.

“Kolkata has always expressed itself through art, colour and conversation,” said Asian Paints managing director and chief executive Amit Syngle. “With St+art Kolkata and ADDA: the third space, we are bringing art directly into neighbourhood life, showing how colour can shape emotion, memory and belonging.”

St+art India Foundation co-founder and chief curator Giulia Ambrogi, said the festival aimed to make art an everyday encounter rather than a spectacle, reflecting the city’s collective spirit and culture of dialogue.

Running across Ballygunge until January 15, St+art Kolkata 2025–26 invites residents to rediscover their city through tactile installations, poetic murals and shared spaces.