The combat of a labor of life attempting adamantly to live… as my mind frequently travelled into a ghastly world of un-naturalism, presence lost control of its existence and paved itself towards a torrid and shadowy space where green had been sold for the construction of a junkyard. A fear of an approaching storm stormed my mind by whispering the awaiting despair into my ears. Suddenly, a day ran back, and the sky screamed departure. My head rested on a burnt pillow, and I saw crows flying in my scary sleep. They searched for water all around, dying of thirst. My meandering mind cried out for rain as I couldn’t find the room for an ideal bath. I could identify dead bodies all around, yet it felt like the bodies were continuing to breathe. The birds killed each other with joy and jubilation. It seemed I was dragging myself into a slaughtered world called Paradise Lost. These junctures of morbidity and freak came to me like wretched moments in my conscious and subconscious as I, along with my community of sufferers, were trying to breathe with the corona virus (COVID-19) as our ill-wishers.

The idea of contextualizing my journey, filled with paranoia, into an expo where the display would be the tool towards sharing and expressing was inevitable from the moment I gathered a certain amount of legitimacy towards coming back to life. I craved long for a substantial dialogue of the cerebrals along with a psychic discourse while exploring the convenient language and practice of art making by an art practitioner with whom I could share and address my experiences. In turn, it could formulate the narrative of the show.

Saumik Chakraborty, with his visual recital of the metaphors that he chronicles through the melancholic nature and sensitivity of his compositions, became an ideal fit to structure the journey. I thought the way he laments, screams, cries in anxiety and despair, gets frustrated with the mental trauma he experiences due to the living socio-political affairs, yet rebelling back with banter, irony, and chutzpah could aptly converse with the agony and morbidity I had experienced and was anxious to symbolize visually.

‘PARADISE LOST’, is the journey of interchange, communion, and dialectics I had with Saumik not only in person but more essentially in a psychological sphere.

Ayan Mukherjee
Curator