Solo Show;
6th July to 5th August 2022; Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi.
https://www.vadehraart.com/exhibitions/177/overview/
Virtual View: https://www.vadehraart.com/exhibitions/177-anupam-roy-broken-cogs-in-the-machine-d-53-defence-colony-new-delhi/virtual_exhibition
Article on my solo show at Vadehra art gallery, Delhi:
https://thewire.in/the-arts/reimagining-brokenness-through-the-lens-of-possibilities
Installation with- 3 Watercolour and Ink Drawings on Acid free Paper (300 gsm); 2 Black Pigment bind with Distemper Drawings on Uncut acid free Paper (300 gsm); 15 Chinese Ink Drawings on Lokta (Nepali handmade) Paper; Ink, Charcoal and Graphite based 1 Drawing on Paper (Accordion form); 5 Pen and Ink drawings on handmade (Banana, Bamboo) Paper; 8 pen and ink Drawings on fragile printed World-maps; 1 Japanese Ink Drawing on Acid free Paper (300 gsm); 1 scrolled painting by gouache, ink, charcoal and graphite on Lokta paper; 2 Monoprints on Paper; A 6 forma book called “Weaving Labyrinth” published by Navarun; 5 Collaborative Published Zines, one Booklet on Anti-Deocha-Pachami Coal Project and one Hand-woven-written Magazine; 10 mixed media Diaries, Locust Review Magazine (issue 3 to 7); 3 books by different Publishers (I have made the book covers); A Collaborative Video Work (animated news reportage in a loop) with Sudip Chakraborty displayed on a TV screen; English and Hindi leaflet and wall text about the exhibition concept (English one written by Shivangi Mariam Raj and Sandip K Luis and in Hindi Translated by Reyazul Haque); 13 Ink Drawings on Corrugated Paper; 5 Ink Drawings on Printed brochure/poster/leaflet/tissue Paper; 2 Etching Prints and wiggle eyes on Paper; 2 acrylic drawings on industrial triple/rough cloth; 5 oil paintings on Canvas; 11 Watercolor Paintings on uncut handmade paper; 6 painted illustrations by Gouache Paint on Lokta paper; hand written text on wall by charcoal and Pigment; Xerox Print Photographs, Ink Drawings, Reflective Tape and wiggle eyes pinned and pasted on a Chinese ink Drawing on Paper, Painted festoon by black ink on hand-woven and rough cotton cloth (mostly used by the construction workers and generally sold in the hardware shops) with hand-written text with Acrylic Paint; mixed media (Terracotta Bricks, Black stone chips, Cement, m-seal, Iron wire, Termite-eaten wood bar, Ink drawing on Rice Paper and a mixed media diary) Sculpture, 2 offline Panel Discussions (First: The Politics of the Unrepresentable (16th July 2022) Soumyabrata Chowdhury, Shukla Sawant and Santhosh Sadanand) ( Second: The question of collectives in Contemporary Art and Politics (4th August 2022) Brahma Prakash, Kavita Krishnan and Sandip K Luis); one Online Panel Discussion (‘Figures of Brokenness’, 28th July 2022) with Pinak Banik, Shivangi Mariam Raj and Adam Turl; both these discussions are moderated by me and there are two performances one by Nasir Hasan from Kashmir and 3 other performers from West Bengal- Saptak Mistry, Achinta Mandal and Subhankar Gain did a fusion with Potry, Flute and Rap; Informal discussions, Lunch Parties and so on.
“Reality, is what it is. This suffering truth
advertised in all men’s loveliest histories.”
Amiri Baraka
A clockwork universe is still the idea that serves to be the engine of totalitarian fantasies—be them the dreams of the fossil capital or the surveillance-state run by the brahmin-bania complex and settler-colonialists. The social organism is conceived as a machinic Leviathan, an autopoietic and gargantuan organisation that gaits with an impeccable rhythm and precision. Driven by pre-programmed instincts and desires, working punctual within their prescribed places, and fighting for mere survival, humans are nothing but human-animals, serving to be the cogs in the machine of nature (or a naturalised culture). But over time, some of them get tired, worn out, and eventually make the Leviathan stagger and cripple, if not immediately collapse. Relegated behind in the society’s perennial march to ‘development’, these broken parts are now the excess and each of us, but with a potential to inaugurate a new temporality of co-existence beyond the clockwork of power. For it is Anupam Roy’s conviction that “the excess annihilates the surplus [of wealth and power]”—a radically novel idea developed from the artist’s more than a decade-old life as a Communist activist, campaigner, and, as he calls himself, a “propagandist/propagator of truth”.
Anupam’s works are an attempt to compose a history of our time by gathering the infinity of its traces into the impossible inventory that Antonio Gramsci envisioned. The figures, foliage, and textures that animate his canvas serve as invitations to pull ourselves out of our collective amnesia, and to politicise our memory-making. They are an attempt to illuminate the traces, to run through the phantoms of our collective consciousness, to invoke absences that continue to claim our nights. Forms are arranged, written over, and layered with a kinesis that rejects any kind of containing or withholding. In his works we find an idea premised on collective witnessing, an act of with-nessing where the insurgent possibilities of shared thinking and doing take radical proportions.
In Anupam’s works, there paces restlessly an explosive thirst to “bombard the headquarters of this social body”, as the artist paraphrases Mao Zedong’s famous words. Each frame in Anupam’s oeuvre reveals a topography of existential precarity and absurdity where all language slips and stumbles over itself—the “representational impossibility” or “inarticulateness” as the artist puts it. The contradictions in Anupam’s practice arise from his self-definition as a propagandist in a world where words fail, and images decompose. What we see, then, is a labyrinth of broken signs, guarded by the narrow door of the alphabet that refuses to let anything pass. As Anupam considers his studio practice and political activism as being parallel to each other—in a sharp opposition to the NGOised notions of ‘art activism’—he at times assumes the role of an enfant terrible of the art world, as if driven by the ambition of exposing the barely addressed contradictions of the institutionalised art itself. These tensions and antinomies imbue his work with a search for a counter-image and counter-praxis, producing an archive of affects and concepts driven by the Beckettian motto: “fail again, fail better”.
As the machine moves and sinks its fangs deeper into our skin, it produces in us forms of self-alienation. We are forced to deepen the cleft between our thought and action, as the automaton tugs at our bodies, tearing and breaking us apart. But broken cogs in the machine are no ordinary cogs: they hold the potential to impede its progress, to alter its temporal course, and eventually compel the machine to break (down) with them.
“Some will return home, and some will die.
But where will we go?
We, who are unable to live, unable to die.
We, whose only recourse is poetry.”
- Vidrohi
– Concept note written by Sandip K Luis & Shivangi Mariam Raj
Tanmay Das, Shambhavi Gairola, Sudip Chakraborty, Srijan Biswas and Vadehra Art Gallery.
Banipur Art Society and Institute of Culture; Navarun Publications; Birbhum Jibon, Jibika O Prakriti Bachao Mahasabha; Aatika Singh, Aman Negi, Shailesh B R, Tahsin Akhtar, Annalisa Mansukhani, Shambhavi Gairola, Vidya Shivadas, Labani Jangi, Girish Chandra Pathak, Pradeep Kumar, Harish Prakash, Radheshyam, Pratap Singh, Lalit Pant, Badam, Mahender Kumar and others.
all, @anupam_art