Inside The 2025 Mazda Art Festival In Hyderabad: A Three-Day Love Letter to Art
The 2025 edition of the festival wasn't just a place to see artworks, but one where artists feel seen, supported, and at home.
Published : November 17, 2025 at 3:08 PM IST
There are art festivals that feel like polite wine-and-cheese gatherings, and then there is the recently-held Mazda Art Festival: three days of colour, crowds, conversations, live demos, frantic last-minute framing, overwhelmed volunteers, and that particular kind of joyful chaos that happens only when hundreds of artists gather under one roof.
Held at the State Gallery Of Art in Madhapur, Hyderabad, this year’s edition felt less like an exhibition and more like a reunion: of artists, of ideas, of creative restlessness. With over 240 artists from across India and nearly 400 artworks nudging elbows in the gallery's bright, slightly overwhelmed rooms, the festival had the energy of a place that has grown faster than it expected to, in the best way possible.
The Festival That Outgrew Its Own Walls
At one point, festival founder Vispi Tarapore looked around the bustling gallery and said, “We’ve outgrown the venue.” He isn’t exaggerating. For the third year in this location, the footfall swelled to the point where visitors hovered shoulder-to-shoulder, craning their necks toward canvases, clicking photos.
Vispi explained it with the resigned humour of someone who has accepted that success brings its own challenges. Registrations closed three months in advance. Artists booked flights six months ago, and accommodation soon after. Some (like Hyderabad-born, US-based artist Smita Rane) flew down just for these three days. “I came specifically for this festival,” she said. But her sentiment captured something bigger: Mazda isn’t just a place to show your work; it's a place where artists feel seen, supported, and at home.
Built On Inclusion, Not Just Exhibition
Beyond the crowd and the canvases, Mazda did something powerful this year: it made inclusivity the heart of its narrative. A special showcase by 21 neurodivergent artists from the Down Syndrome Federation of India stood in the top floor gallery, their works radiating a raw joy uninhibited by self-consciousness. In a space where established masters were giving live demos, and seasoned artists had flown from all over the country, this section felt like a reminder of why art matters in the first place: everyone deserves a canvas.
It’s a philosophy woven into the very fabric of the Mazda Art Foundation, the brainchild of Vispi Tarapore and co-led with Dilnawaz Tarapore. The Foundation is building a creative ecosystem: one that offers grants, platforms, guidance, and what struggling artists often need most: visibility.
Live Art Demos: Creativity In Real Time
Live art demonstrations are tricky. They’re essentially the creative equivalent of asking someone to solve a math problem while a hundred people stare at them. But Mazda’s lineup of master artists didn’t just handle it, they made it look easy. The large auditorium became an impromptu classroom with seven demonstrations by seasoned names like Amit Kapoor, Bijay Biswaal, Prafull Sawant, Dhimant Vyas, and Sadashivv Sawant... each a crowd magnet in their own right.
Mumbai-based Master Artist Sadashivv Sawant, Founder - Pencil Perceptions Academy, has been part of Mazda for three consecutive years. He talked to ETV Bharat with the calm confidence of a man who has spent a lifetime hunched over paper making magic with graphite. His demo focused on pencil rendering: “The kind of realism you can bring in a shorter time,” he explained, choosing toned paper to demonstrate how to compress a long, meticulous process for a live audience.
He smiled when he talked about the festival. “Very enthusiastic environment,” he said. “Lot of learning. Lot of celebration.” He also revealed something touching: 20-30% of his art students travelled to Hyderabad from across India “just to be here.” For him, Mazda was a reunion of a growing artistic family.
Master Artist Amit Kapoor from Delhi, who is President, International Watercolour Society India, paints watercolours the way travellers collect stories: fast, instinctively, and with an eye for moments most of us miss. At the festival, he created a scene from Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, using only a few tonal values to show the interplay of light and shadow. “It’s the most spontaneous medium,” he said. “You have to be fast. The light keeps changing.”
He spoke the way artists do when their work is inseparable from their identity: calmly, intensely, without a trace of doubt. And he laughed about how he flew in from Delhi for this, and was leaving the next day because Europe was calling again. Artists are nomads; he simply lives like one.
Artists Who Brought Stories To The Walls
Kolkata-based Arshad Saeed's 3D works caught everyone’s eye not just for their craftsmanship but for the philosophy behind them. “There are three basic ingredients,” he said. “Passion, patience, and craziness.” He clarified that he wasn’t recycling materials, though it looked like he was. Instead, he uses objects in ways they were never intended. “If the sellers knew what I’d do with them, they’d shut down their business,” he joked.
Smita Rane's work, titled Something Precious, came from her memories of reading to children in a slum. One day, mid-story, the kids suddenly ran off towards the water tanker. A small girl, delighted with just a handful of water, played joyfully while chaos echoed around her. “That was precious,” Smita recalled. “For her, that little water was enough. For me, the moment was everything.” Vispi added a note of interpretation, linking the painting to children chasing food in conflict zones like Gaza. Art, here was reflection.
Bengaluru-based Prachi Kumari left an 8-year banking career after her son was born and finally pursued the dream she had been shelving for years. Now she runs Dreamy Palette, her own art studio. “I felt like something was missing,” she said. “Art filled that space.” Her works explore spiritual themes, and Mazda gave her what she had been craving: exposure, connection, and validation. “I got to meet so many talented artists,” she said, glowing with the excitement of someone who has entered the world she belongs in.
Tamil artist Mariappan’s oil-on-canvas realism stunned visitors with its photographic accuracy. He’s been painting for 40 years, since the age of nine, and is almost entirely self-taught. His award list is long; his humility even longer. His masterpiece at the festival (a Tamil cultural scene) took him three months. It stood quietly on the wall, the product of decades of devotion. “I like watercolour, acrylic and charcoal, pencil too but my favourite medium is oil on canvas because of its realism,” he told ETV Bharat.
Relevant In Current Times
It’s easy to dismiss art festivals as niche events. But Mazda isn’t niche, it’s necessary. It brings together artists searching for their big break, students dreaming of their first exhibition, masters who want to pass down what they’ve learned, collectors who want to discover something new, families who want their children exposed to creativity, and strangers who come in out of curiosity and leave slightly changed. The festival creates a shared space where art is not just looked at, but lived.
Mazda’s greatest triumph wasn’t its scale or its sales or its demos. It was its community. A community where a master artist and a first-time exhibitor can stand shoulder to shoulder. Where neurodivergent artists share wall space with international award-winners. Where a former banker, a 9-year-old prodigy-turned-veteran, and a woman who flew in from the US for three days can call each other peers. And if the crowd was any indication, next year’s edition won’t just outgrow the venue, it will outgrow our expectations.
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