Starting this weekend in Melbourne, the festival will be held over four weekends across different venues featuring more than 100 artists in an array of music, dance, spoken word, comedy, classical and experimental performances and conversations.
Highlights:
- Sangam is a platform for emerging and established South Asian-Australian artists in Melbourne
- The festival started in 2019; over 100 artists expected to perform this year
- Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions, international artists will not perform at the festival this year
Sangam was inaugurated in 2019, which exhibited 80 award-winning South Asian and Australian artists of diverse backgrounds, thereby creating new models of artistic presentation.
This festival is inspired, curated and directed by Dr Priya Srinivasan, Hari Sivanesan and Uthra Vijay.
Dr Srinivasan, who also works as a performer, choreographer and writer, says that the platform was born from the need to provide emerging and mid-career South Asian artists space and support in mainstream venues and projects.
“My life trajectory began here in Melbourne as an artist and child of Indian migrants growing up in Naarm (Indigenous name for Melbourne CBD), performing extensively as a young dancer in mainstream arts spaces,” she says.
“Back then, there was very little diversity on mainstream stages and everything seemed to be divided. South Asian arts were labelled 'community art' and relegated to the margins, both literally and metaphorically, with artists performing in suburbs, high schools and community centres in the periphery of our city."
Sangam is supported by Creative Victoria in partnership with Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV), Australia Council for the Arts, the City of Melbourne, the City of Greater Dandenong and Yarra City Council.
Dr Srinivasan says, "The first iteration of Sangam brought together artists many of whom had not met each other before."
"It also offered a third space for many young artists like myself who had not reconciled their binary identity of being both South Asian and Australian with a stage to question, discuss, and share with like-minded artists," he adds.
The festival will be showcased in Bunjil Place, Dancehouse, Abbotsford Convent, and Drum Theatre in Dandenong in the upcoming weekends.
Source: Miranda Brown Publicity
Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions, international artists will not perform at the festival this year.
