Asian Paints, in collaboration with the St+art India Foundation, has announced the St+art Kolkata Festival 2025–26, bringing large-scale public art interventions to the city with ADDA: The Third Space – Ballygunge Art Project. Rooted in Kolkata’s rich legacy of dialogue, creativity and street culture, the festival reimagines public spaces as sites for connection, conversation and shared experience.
Marking the inaugural edition of St+art Kolkata, the citywide festival unfolds across Ballygunge, South Kolkata, with a series of outdoor public art installations and an indoor exhibition at the TRI Art & Culture Centre. Supported by Asian Paints, and with the indoor exhibition developed in collaboration with TRI Art & Culture and supported by KCT Group CSR, the project explores the idea of the ‘third space’—a space that exists between home and work, encouraging belonging, exchange and everyday interaction.
At the heart of the outdoor interventions is the Colour Corridor, an immersive passageway inspired by Chromacosm, Asian Paints’ multisensory exploration of how colour influences mood, memory and movement. Designed by artist Sayan Mukherjee, the installation acts as a sensorial welcome zone, inviting visitors to slow down and experience colour as part of their daily commute through the neighbourhood.
The Colour Corridor also incorporates a specially written Bengali poem, voiced in an accompanying film, offering a lyrical tribute to Kolkata’s cultural rhythm. A typographic façade intervention by street artist KHATRA further anchors the Chromacosm experience, which is extended through augmented reality elements across the TRI façade and its indoor spaces.
Complementing the outdoor installations, the indoor exhibition at TRI Art & Culture Centre brings together immersive works by ten artists, examining how private and public spaces often merge in a city like Kolkata. Through multisensory installations using colour, texture, sound and scent, the exhibition reimagines everyday domestic spaces as shared environments—inviting audiences to reflect on ideas of intimacy, memory and collective belonging.
ADDA: The Third Space – Ballygunge Art Project builds on the long-standing collaboration between Asian Paints and St+art India Foundation, guided by the ethos of #ArtForAll. Over the years, this partnership has transformed neighbourhoods across Lodhi, Mahim, Nochi and beyond, creating public art districts that bring creativity into everyday urban life. With St+art Kolkata, the focus remains on encouraging people to inhabit art—using it as a space to pause, converse and connect.
The interventions across Ballygunge will remain open to the public until January 15, inviting citizens and visitors alike to rediscover Kolkata through tactile installations, poetic murals and shared cultural moments.
Commenting on the initiative, Amit Syngle, MD & CEO, Asian Paints Ltd., said, “Kolkata has always expressed itself through art, colour and conversation. Our relationship with this city has been shaped by decades of engaging with its artists and communities. With St+art Kolkata and ADDA: The Third Space, we are delighted to bring art directly into the neighbourhoods of Ballygunge, transforming familiar public spaces into places of interaction and shared experience. Through Chromacosm, we also explore how colour can influence emotion, memory and belonging, further strengthening our long-standing partnership with St+art India Foundation.”
Giulia Ambrogi, Co-Founder and Chief Curator, St+art India Foundation, added, “St+art Kolkata is an attempt to listen to the city’s pulse—its adda culture, its thresholds and its collective spirit. Through ADDA: The Third Space, we hope to blur the boundaries between home and street, and between art and everyday life. Our collaboration with Asian Paints, TRI Art & Culture and KCT Group enables us to continue expanding the language of public art and its role in building empathy and shared belonging within cities.”
Madeleine St. John, Director, TRI Art & Culture, said, “ADDA: The Third Space marks an important moment for TRI Art & Culture as it brings the street into our galleries and the galleries into the street. Hosting site-specific installations across our heritage property aligns with our mission to democratise the arts and cultivate community through creativity. We are excited to share these hybrid artistic futures with the TRI community.”
