One of the artworks to be displayed at The Non-Veg Art Show

The word “non-veg” has many connotations today. Besides the literal meaning of animal produce in food, the term also represents something immoral but secretly desired — non-veg jokes, non-veg songs and the like. Playing on such connotations, three artists have come together to put up an exhibition that attempts to push the limit, tinker with boundaries and explore the “non-veg” side to our society.

To be held from October 24 to November 6 at Maya Art Space in Kasba (329 Shanti Pally, Rajdanga), the exhibition will feature the works of Bandeep Singh, Nilanjan Das and Anirban Ghosh, each of whom has been working in print media for more than a decade.

“Non-veg is something related to adult behaviour. It crosses into a grey area, a territory between right and wrong. We want to interpret the connotations and sub-cultures around the word in our own way through our artworks,” said Bandeep Singh, a fine arts photographer and photo editor of Fortune India.

Singh’s work for The Non-Veg Art Show includes a set of classical nude photographs. “Most of the images are from a series of nude studies done with dupatta, the role of which — generally used to shield the body from external gaze — has been reversed to reveal the sensuality of the feminine form. The photographs show how the depiction of a body is perceived and labelled in a mass populist culture,” said Singh.

Nilanjan Das, creative director at Fortune India, has focused on how the desire to follow western trends blindly is today directly reflected in the changing food habits of urban Indians.

“Our idea of food is to some extent determined by the culture in which we are brought up. However, media and advertising have an impact on food habits. People from my generation fondly remember a pishir haater torkari or didar haater shukto. But today’s generation swears by pizza and pasta. A conscious effort to shrug off our deep-rooted culinary traditions has resulted in a rootless entity through generations and we all are responsible for that. My artwork mocks that mindless obsession with trends,” said Das.

Graphic artist Anirban Ghosh thinks market forces at times compel creative people to compromise with their belief systems and produce what popularity dictates.

“For this exhibition, my creative expressions were free from such pressures and hence my artworks represent my perception of the world, not a make-believe world dictated by some western power,” said Ghosh.

Open from 2pm to 8pm daily, The Non-Veg Art Show promises to be a space of transgression. “It can’t afford to be veggie. To be politically correct is out of the question as well. Being non-veg is the only option,” said the trio.