Curatorial Space

When Saumik Chakraborty invited me to come to work and show in Kolkata, I knew his and his wife’s (Piyali Sadhukan) work was already quite good.

I had seen them showing together in Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau, Switzerland, and loved their work. I did an internship on curation at that time in that place. I already noticed that we all had much in common in our ways of working.

Saumik asked his friend, the art historian and curator Ayan Mukherjee, if I could show my work at his art space, A. M. Art Multi-disciplines, Kolkata.

And yes, I could. And I am very glad and honored about both invitations and to have gotten those subsidies from Kuratorium Aargau.

At the moment of Saumik’s invitation, we were in contact on Facebook and saw each other’s posts. I was working on pastel drawings of heads of women and men of unclear ethnicity, together with dog and cow heads.

At that moment, I felt lonely (winter in Bumblefuck) and was thinking about adopting a very small dog, like a Chihuahua, because those very small ones you can carry in a bag when you travel by plane.

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.

Your name I want and war to live,

And fight the Rose to grant the disease.

Adventure to follow, advert to feel,

All in vague, satire of disbelieve…

Do we know that history may not persist??

Cross my faith to steal again,

Run the aggression and enigma

We love the Rose requisite for us

Juxtapose life towards an organic fail.

Exotic rose riots the mind

The greatness to buy and lose it off

Create a belief of dysfunctional thoughts

The abnormal deeds, the find of toil.

সময়টা ছিল নির্ভীক রঙের।

সকাল গড়িয়ে রাত হতে দেখতাম প্রতিনিয়ত। টিউব কলের জলে তেষ্টা মিটতে দেখেছি, ফিলামেন্টর আলে আলাপ পোয়াতো রোদ্দুরের সঙ্গে জানলার খড়খড়ির ফাঁক দিয়ে উঁকি মরে।

নিরিবিলি দুপুর ঘুমিয়ে পড়লে গলি ভরা কচিকাঁচাদের গলা আহ্বান জানাতো ল্যাম্পপোস্টের হলুদ টিম টিমে আলোকে। আমি ছিলাম সেদিন, দেখেছি সবটা।

দেখতো আমার সাথে আমার বন্ধু গুলোও, বহু বছর পথ হেঁটেছি যে আমরা হাতে হাত দিয়ে।

হেঁটেছি আর গিলেছি এই শহরের ছবিগুলোর পাল্টে যাওয়াকে। নির্ভেজাল হার মেনেছে জটিলতার কাছে,

মানবিকতায় ভরপুর যত্ন ক্রমাগত আঘাত পেয়েছে লোভ চালিত যান্ত্রিক ক্রীতদাসদের হাতে।

হ্যাঁরে, তোরা হাঁফাস না? ধ্বংস দিয়ে মাখা ভাত খেতে ভালোবাসিস বুঝি?

Dark Side of the Moon, the way I had conceived and conceptualised it, features a collection of images and the artistic voices of six different contemporary artists from Kolkata, which comprehensively discusses the philosophical, physical, and socio-political mandates of our existence that can lead us towards insanity and ultimately an unfulfilled life. The images and works try to interconnect and coherently exist to showcase the shades of today’s detrimental and hollow times leading us towards madness, intolerance, and violence. They dig deep into today’s dystopia, facilitating them to be a mirror for society, which brings forth the dark realities and sometimes acts as the root cause of this insane time and our self-centric ways of living, which advocate unfulfillment.

A reality check would suggest that there is no dark side to the moon, but while conceiving the narrative of this exhibition, this phrase turned out to be an ideal metaphor for absolute darkness. The darkness that prevails intensively can destroy all of the positive emotions of human beings and humanity as a whole. In effect, the darkness represents insanity. In reality, the light portrayed by the moon is really an illusion; it’s rather fake, as we know the moon reflects the light of the sun. In turn, this mock light of the moon turns out to be an allegory to the times our civilization advertises and the various deceptive and outlandish dimensions and perspectives of our decision-making, along with the barbaric choices we make by merely riding the tide of times and trends. The landscape of our reality, which can jolly well be termed a well-to-do hoax, harmonises and paves the way towards wretched souls, crime scenes, prejudice-driven fanaticism, abandoned relationships, intimate betrayals, and so on.

‘যখন দেখি ওরা কাজ করে গ্রামে বন্দরে,

শুধুই ফসল ফলায়, ঘাম ঝড়ায় মাঠে প্রান্তরে

তখন ভালো লাগে না, লাগে না কোন কিছুই’

–মহীনের ঘোড়াগুলি (Mohiner Ghoraguli)

In our day-to-day interactions and exchanges, we often use the sound or word “EEYE” in place of something that we have forgotten.

In the light of this exhibition, for whom has the word “Eeye” been used?

Who are they?

Do they belong to that marginalized breed of human flesh and blood that does not leave a mark of their existence on the billboards of the society? Nameless and casteless, this ignored or cornered class has always been kept under our reigns, barred from societal acceptance. However, they have always played a vital role in organising the dire necessities of our daily lives. These hardworking beings with their silent footsteps have been creating the foundation on which we exist for ages now.

Chutzpah Monologue Hello? Hello??? Mic tests 1, 2, and 3 Hello…?? Awaz aa rahi hai aap laog ko??

 ‘Where have all the flowers gone?

Long time ago.

Oh, when will you ever learn?

Oh, when will you ever learn?

 It is genuinely annoying and disturbing for me to consider and agree that the times in which we live are obligatory and distorted. People live with a deceptive state of mind and custom-made attitudes and attire. When things go out of our control, we tend to fix things by opting for the effortless option, i.e., submission. Rather, we would have loved to live with panache and conviction by telling things the way they should be told and by creating a space for harsh but true expressions along with appropriate execution.

‘Visual Dialogues on the Current Pandemic’

Conceived and Curated by Ayan Mukherjee.

These are bewildering times that our civilization is attending to and undergoing. We, the people, have a job in hand in adapting ourselves to this grave pandemic, shielding one another, thus trying to protect society from this deadly virus and ensuring the durability of our existence. In order to defend ourselves, we have been introduced to various ‘protective gears’ that are steadily becoming a part of our journey through life. These elements, speculatively, are helping us to stay alive and breathe, giving us prospects of being safe and secured from the paradox we call COVID-19.

It’s about organising a future by annihilating the unrealized practicality of the existing reality. It’s about making merry and creating history, overlooking a world walking towards dissolution. A world filled with innovative ideas and thoughts waiting to stretch its arms towards perfection fall flat every time we search for kindness and wisdom in it. Thus carelessly proving it to be eloquently imperfect. A Part / Apart, the exhibition tries its best to talk about and question this suppressed reality of which we are all proud and euphoric.

A lost world filled with nostalgia, gone by times loaded with memories, visuals that had always been cerebral, unutteredaching’s, and a heart filled with reminiscence—that’s what I relate to when I see those bold horizontal strokes of charcoal and pastels running through the images of crows and swans, making them look meagre and grievously inconsequential in the drawings on paper (mediums being dry pastel, charcoal, ink, and graphite) by Atin Basak. They are numb, yet they tend to express themselves profoundly, somehow symbolising the materiality of the present very perceptibly.

We human beings are apotheosis, gaining the sovereignty of being the greatest living creature on this planet with our inventions, creations, and fructifications, keeping technology as our perennial partner and savior in many ways. We have touched the Moon, yet on a separate aspect, we tend to invalidate the fact that just like we are citizens of this planet we call Earth, and we avidly call it our own, the same way these cramped and tender creatures like sparrows, crows, and even pigeons, who are literally struggling for their existence, are also an elemental part of the Earth family. We graduate from our existence, overlooking the fact that we are touching extinction.

For me, ‘mute ‘painting’ poses a counterargument to the claim or concept that a painting is an ‘expression’; it expresses something.

Rather, for me, such an expression is a strategic political construct that suppresses the whole process of rejection, elimination, and muting those elements that, in the capacity of being inseparable and intricate parts of the process itself of such construction, could challenge the “meaning” that such a painting aims to achieve for the construct (painting) itself.

Saumik Chakraborty, born on July 13, 1975, is a ‘self-taught’ art practitioner and an acclaimed stage craft designer. He has been associated with the theatre industry for the last 20 years, having designed over 150 productions on stage.

My first viewing of his art works took place rather informally; in fact, I would like to call it an uninitiated accident. The reason I call it so is purely because of the sudden discovery of his work, which I realised later with time. His work is, to me, pure allegory, an image of the contemporary social situation. His work appeals and narrates not only to a restricted society but on a much larger scale; the landscape stretches out to reflect the communities and their history throughout the world. His selection of colours and tones, along with the way he tackles various mediums, only recites the metaphorical hues, which he chronicles through the melancholic nature and sensitivity of his compositions. He laments, screams, and cries in anxiety and despair. He gets frustrated with the mental trauma he experiences due to the socio-political events that trigger thoughts that get reflected in his work. Saumik’s work also displays a deep feeling of re-visiting his past struggles, hopes, memories, and remembrances, which he records with utter honesty and reality, which again demonstrates the despair and pathos of the times gone by.

Saumik explores different mediums like charcoal, conte, dry pastel, ink, graphite, and acrylic, along with the usage of techniques like photocopy transfer. Most of his works come with a dominant surface (self-made), which also acts as a fantastic background, and then we see the enactment of a subtle dialogue between the background and foreground. There’s an unrealized play of megalographical images used as a ropographical study in his works.

Ayan Mukherjee
Curator

Sanjib Mondal’s art, a counter-practice to socio-historical criminality of the larger habitat of his belonging, manifests itself in varied forms of expression. A proficient young painter and printmaker, Sanjib, trained in Santiniketan’s Kala Bhavana, is uniquelyfocussed on making art in his own norm, within the crisis of an art practitioner’s material survival.Sanjibmakes images in the spirit of various contextual deliverances of material realities of hislife-conditions. Once as a student producing large scale experimental woodcut prints, Sanjib has gradually chosen to work with charcoal on paper, as a central medium for the fundamental design of his images, on a comparatively reduced scale. Sanjib’s use of charcoal as a medium comes from his historical consciousness of experiential belonging within the phenomenology of caste-society which is devoid of any focus of light of history. A life-world, lit by their own light of struggle for human dignity and material survival confronting endemic Brahmanic hegemony, appears in its ignored fragments in Sanjib’s images.