A STAR IS BORN BRENDAN FERNANDES' VERY BIG YEAR

Few artists on the global scene are as multi-talented and inventive as the Goan-Canadian Brendan Fernandes. The 40-year-old rising star, who works at the intersection of dance and the visual arts, had a spectacular 2019, including a headline slot at the prestigious Whitney Biennale. Last year, he debuted a witty online work that riffs on our current Zoom-dominated reality. Vivek Menezes tells you why this creative powerhouse should be firmly on your radar

- Vivek Menezes

MMog Asundi is an essential Konkani catchphrase, which literally means “let there be love”. While most often shared to bid farewell, it’s also an illuminating encapsulation of the profoundly peaceable and inclusive world view of Goa. The late laureate Bakibab Borkar poetically described it as “the universality of the spirit of the Goan artist”, whose “genius branches off in all directions, even when he is flung in distant climes. No aesthetic influence, no matter from which corner of the world it might come, is unacceptable to him as long as it is prone to blend with his basic texture.”

The great littérateur died in 1984, when Brendan Fernandes was just five years old and still living in Nairobi as the youngest member of the fifth generation of his family in the diaspora in Kenya. But there’s no doubt Borkar would have delighted in just how true his words have proven across the oceans and eras, and writ anew in his fellow Goan’s stunning, kaleidoscopic career that is largely unrivalled in the history of South Asian art. This is the story of the greatest artist of Indian origin that you’ve never heard of, and the golden year that catapulted him to global acclaim.