A residency project, July 2018.
Site: Banipur Art Society Institute of Culture, Banipur, Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal.
Variable
painted banners, posters and festoon by black pigment bind with distemper and red-oxide on handwoven and rough cotton cloth, painted illustrations by gouache on rice-paper, pen and ink drawings on fragile printed world-maps, hand written text on wall, plastic sheet and fragile iron sheet, painted plastic wrapped floor, Chinese ink drawing on uncut handmade paper, drawings by black pigment on paper pasted on cotton cloth, diaries, old portfolios of my work, different books on poetry curated performative activities and discussion. The idea of the residency embodies the experience of openness, the perception of pluralism, vastness of possibilities and interdisciplinary proliferation. In fact, it has derived from the context of an existential crisis of social disorderliness. It’s an attempt to understand how art is directly rooted in social issues and what practices can emerge through the collective process. The residency project at BASIC (Banipur Art Society and Institute of Culture) was organised for a total of fourteen days, and during its course the studio-premise experienced an attempt towards contemporary art practice with exchanges between diverse art practitioners and their various artistic statements. BASIC is housed in an ex-military base camp from the second world war, and it was fascinating to trace the history of the structure from a military training centre functioning under our colonial rulers to an art-studio functioning as an incubator for counter-state art practices; BASIC has travelled a long compelling path in history. In the last 15-20 years BASIC has become an active site for the local youth and children to produce and practice art forms. This initiative was an attempt to open various modes of communication between the local stakeholders, community and art practitioners. The thematic approach aimed at unravelling the politics between land and precarious bodies by creating images of deformed faces, tattered bodies, wound, and fly-the symbolic of morbidities in the vast landscape of industrial wastes (read urban civilisation). This work looks at the conflict of land and urbanisation through positioning precarious subjects in frames. Drawings carry references of both violent instances of land atrocities and organised land movements claiming the right over land, water, dignity, existence and life. The exhibition consists of a few photoshopped images of myself, which function to visually recreate the effects of fake-encounters on bodies marked with vulnerabilities. The attempt of this work is to bring together contradictions and consequences around land. I aimed to creating an excess by displacing the complexities of land as a political discourse. The thought behind organizing a fourteen-day residential project, was to bring together different mediums of artistic expressions in one platform. To achieve that, we invited diverse art practitioners (already countering the aesthetic of mainstream art-practice) to perform their act at the studio-premise. Kolkata based visual artist Sambaran Das and performance artist Syed Taufiq Riyaz gave presentation of their practices and sharing last two decades of their works. Uma Banerjee, Priya Guha Roy, Supriyo Karmakar, Ashish Dhali and Rocky Majumder presented their performances. Finally, Arjun Kar a singer and song writer, sung some his and other artists songs of radical working class. Students, songwriters, singers, theatre-practitioners, film-makers came together to share the community space by means of their expressions; developing a collective consciousness around contemporary art practice. The residency aims to strengthen the position of an artist as a catalyst for creative understanding of masses, along with upholding the ethos of a collective solidarity. Display view, Banipur, Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal.
Banipur Art Society Institute of Culture, Tushar Kanti Saha, Ashis Dhali, Rocky Mazumder, Suvankar Gain, Sanjay Rishi, Abhishek Paul, Arjun Kar, Srijan Biswas, Priya Saha Roy, Supriya Karmakar, Uma Banerjee, Sambaran Das, Syed Taufiq Riyaz, lots of other friends and comrades who supported me during this residency all the possible way. This residency functioned through crowd funding, and I am thankful to all of them who supported me and the organisation who run this program.
all, @anupam_art