Last Thursday in Amsterdam, the NICCT Synergy Series brought together culture and commerce under the theme Bridging Cultures, Building Business in the India–Netherlands Corridor Through Art. Hosted by South Asian Contemporary Art Amsterdam, the evening highlighted how creativity continues to shape global understanding and collaboration.
After the opening by Edith Nordmann and Tasneem Hatimbhai, Dr. Dhruv Janssen-Sanghavi reflected on why art is increasingly becoming a strategic corporate asset—soft power in action and a driver of the modern creative economy. Artist Shivangi Kalra then guided us into her world and her exhibition It’s Getting Out of Hand.
Kalra’s work explores nostalgia in all its complexity: tender and warm, yet unsettled by what lies beneath. Fragments of the past surface as half-heard conversations, gatherings touched by distant extravagance, and homes filled with splendour and secrecy. These memories resist closure—too vivid to forget, too elusive to grasp. Her paintings become spaces where memory plays tricks: sanguine yet haunting, deeply personal yet strangely shared.
Architectural traces ground her imagery, while atmospheres drift in like afterimages of a once-lived life.
It is a poetry of remembering and misremembering, where beauty and melancholy intertwine, and where the hidden refuses to stay concealed.
It’s Getting Out of Hand invites us to step across a threshold into what is remembered, imagined, and everything that lingers in between (more information about paintings and prices of her work can be asked at SAC Art Amsterdam – Tasneem Hatimbhai).
As NICCT Chairwoman Edith Nordmann shared in her opening speech: understanding India’s creative economy is part of understanding modern India—its confidence, innovation, and cultural power. Art informs, inspires, and influences, forging connections long before strategy does.
Our sincere thanks to Tasneem Hatimbhai for bringing this concept to life, and to Shivangi Kalra for allowing us into her evocative artistic universe.
An evening of colours, conversations, and cross-cultural connections—exactly what strengthens the NL–India corridor.
Catering taking care of by Tasty Talks – Manasi Khanna