Kolkata has long been a city where art permeates everyday discussions, stories, and the streets. Asian Paints, in partnership with the St+art India Foundation, presents the St+art Kolkata Festival 2025–2026 with The Third Space: Ballygunge Art Project, a citywide celebration of color, community, and the creative energy that defines Kolkata, as part of its ongoing commitment to making art accessible to everyone.

The project takes place through a number of public art interventions throughout Ballygunge in South Kolkata as part of the first St+art Kolkata Festival, which is sponsored by Asian Paints. The festival investigates the concept of a third space, one that permits sharing, connection, and everyday belonging inside the public domain, drawing on the city’s long-standing adda and rowak culture. The Colour Corridor, which was inspired by Chromacosmalong and features a variety of urban interventions around the area, is one of the main projects. The festival’s conceptual inquiry is anchored by an inside show at TRI Art & Culture Centre, which was created in partnership with TRI Art & Culture and funded by KCT Group CSR, in addition to these outside interventions.

By reinventing how people congregate, pause, reflect, and discover a sense of belonging in the city, the Colour Corridor, the urban interventions, and the exhibition collectively convert familiar neighborhood areas into shared experiences.

The vivid, immersive Colour Corridor envelops guests in movement, color, and light. The Colour Corridor, designed by Sayan Mukherjee, invites visitors to slow down, feel, and come across art as part of their daily journey. It is intended to be a sensory welcome zone. The installation transforms these concepts into a physical experience that Kolkata may walk through, using influence from Chromacosm, Asian Paints‘ multimodal investigation of how color shapes mood, memory, and movement.

A specially composed Bengali poem that pays homage to Kolkata’s pulse is also featured in the corridor and is voiced in the accompanying film. The physical presence of the artwork and Chromacosm’s intellectual profundity work together to produce an experience that gives color a sense of life and significance. It demonstrates that color is more than just an aesthetic; it is a language that allows people to communicate and cities to express themselves. The Chromacosm experience is anchored by a typographic façade intervention by street artist KHATRA. Augmented reality is used to further animate the TRI façade and its interior areas.

The indoor show at TRI Art & Culture Centre examines how, in a city like Kolkata, the boundaries between house and street frequently blur. The show reimagines commonplace locations through immersive works by ten artists: a kitchen becomes a sanctuary of memory and aroma, a bed becomes a gathering spot, and well-known proverbs become visual invites. The exhibition creates spaces that are both intimate and communal through the use of color, texture, sound, and fragrance. It asks visitors to consider how we connect and feel like we belong in modern cities, where the public and private spheres are always blurring.

The Third Space: Ballygunge Art Project is the result of a long-standing partnership between Asian Paints and the St+art India Foundation, founded on a mutual dedication to bringing art out of galleries and into the city’s daily life. Inspired by the #ArtForAll philosophy, this collaboration has transformed public art districts and interventions in Lodhi, Mahim, Nochi, and other neighborhoods by converting neglected areas into joyful spaces that encourage people to stop, congregate, and feel connected. This continuous conversation is furthered by the St+art Kolkata Festival, which invites people to engage with art rather than just view it. Every intervention is designed to be a lived space—a place to rest, sit, talk, and feel connected.

St+art Kolkata 2025 allows people to rediscover their city through the prism of art, with interventions taking place around Ballygunge until January 15. Every gesture, from tactile installations to poetic murals, honors Kolkata as a city where creativity flourishes in community rather than in isolation, where the boundaries between everyday life and artistic expression blur into one vibrant dialogue.

Priyanka Dutta