Maximum Male

The changes are not necessarily black and white. Local art curator and consultant on the festival, Mortimer Chatterjee, has another perspective: ‘‘There is no more reality to the notion of hordes of metrosexuals walking the streets of Malad than there is to the dementedly happy actors of the cellphone ads that jump out of every street corner.’’ But it’s difficult not to to get caught up in the frenzied fairy tale of metrosexuality.

British journalist Mark Simpson first coined the phrase ‘metrosexual’ in 1994, but it was not until 2002 that the word really took off after Simpson’s article on metrosexuals for salon.com. Since then, this definition of the shallow urban male who works overtime on his appearance has infiltrated India’s urban centres as much as it has New York or London.

Met-Fest will look at how masculinity has been recently represented in various Indian contemporary art forms such as visual art, film, music, theatre and literature. But it will go beyond art and have panel discussions on different aspects of masculinity—why men’s underwear ads have changed in India to slicker, homoerotic imagery; how male strippers feel when they are depicted as objects of desire.

All this goes to the central question of the festival: How notions of masculinity have changed in our metros by what Verma calls ‘‘the dubious emergence of metrosexuality’’.

Verma admits it is an ambitiously huge subject, especially for a 25-year-old from Delhi who has never put together a festival before. Director of redearthindia.com, an organisation that sponsors events to promote artistic and cultural activity, Verma originally conceived an art exhibit on the theme of urban masculinity about a year ago, with stand-alone events such as panel discussions that would engage people from diverse disciplines to examine how masculinity has changed in Indian popular culture.

‘‘There is definitely the need to get outside perspectives,’’ argues Verma. ‘‘On some level we’re living in an ivory tower. We tend to put different mediums in their own little compartments, especially in the urban art scene, so we don’t have a strong sense of how Indian pop art and culture have affected masculinity.’’ Chatterjee agrees, saying that Met-Fest is a ‘‘bold move, as Indian art circles are traditionally intensely insular and mortified at the idea of self-analysis.’’

Verma’s original concept for an art exhibit has turned into Metrospective: Visual Representations of Metrosexuality, an exhibition that will be the focus of the festival, to be complemented by talks and critiques. He has commissioned around 50 artworks. Artists Riyas Komu and Ravi Kumar Kashi, of the Bombay Progressive school, will have their own take on how masculinity has changed across India.

Verma says this has produced a “rich tapestry” of ideas and images, and not just from young artists currently in vogue. Artist Nayanaa Kanodia has already created In Bed, a painting depicting a bearded old man in a pink shirt, alone with his two dogs. ‘‘It explores the notion of men being comfortable in pink,’’ says Verma. Sanjay Srivastava, a professor of social anthropology at Deakin University in Melbourne and contributor to the festival, says, ‘‘These works force us to think even as they amuse us about the instability of male identity.’’

(Most events will be held at Kitab Mahal, Fort, Mumbai. A complete schedule can be found on redearthindia.com)