This may have looked like a bag of tricks to some of the visitors. A second floor room of the Birla Academy of Art & Culture was the venue of the exhibition titled, Art Full of Bag, An Installation (June 3 to 8). True to its name, it was stuffed with bags handmade by several artists, including Partha Pratim Deb, Hiran Mitra, Amitava Dhar and Alik Das.

The bags were of various sizes — from jumbos to minuscule ones — and one of them was shaped like a house with lights shining inside. Besides the floor, many bags were arranged on bicycles, on walls, on tables and other props, one of which resembled a clothes horse. The bags were multihued and were handpainted by the artists themselves. The ones bearing Deb’s idiosyncratic sketches stood out in this bazaar of bags. His was the only immediately-recognizable signature. A video film was being screened during the show organized by ISCA, which documented the entire process of making these bags. That was not too bad.