An Untold Truth of Mind
Title: An Untold Truth of Mind (2018)
A beautiful contract: An untold truth of mind a residency project, July 2018; (Banipur, Habra, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal)
Special thanks to Srijan Biswas (cinematographer) and Sumit Samaddar (photographer) for documenting the whole event. Thanks to Asish Dhali (artist), Rocky Majumder (artist), Tushar Kanti Saha (artist and PhD scholar), Abhishek Paul (visual artist), Barsha Baral (student activist), Simran Pujari (Designer), Suvankar Gain (Poet), Sanjay Rishi (poet), Ripon Arjya (poet) and Sagnik Saha (photographer).
Dimensions: variable according to the size of surface and space;
Media: 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, handwritten text on the 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.
Description:
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 what and how art is directly rooted in social issues and practising through the collective process. For fourteen days, the residency project progressed at BASIC (Banipur Art Society and the Institute of Culture). During its course, the studio-premise experienced an attempt towards contemporary art practice with exchanges between diverse art practitioners and their various artistic statements. A most fascinating fact about the premises is, it used to be an army base camp from second world-war. From a military training centre functioning under our colonial rulers to an art-studio intriguing counter-state art practice; BASIC has travelled a long compelling path in history. In the last 15-20 years, BASIC became an active spread for the local youth and children to produce and practice art forms. This initiative was an attempt to open up various modes of communication between the local stakeholders, community and art practitioners.
The thematic approach was to unravel the politics between land and precarious bodies. 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 tried to look at the conflicts of land/urbanity 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. Brought into exhibit few photo-shopped self-images 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 the land. I aimed to create an excess by displacing the complexities of land as a political discourse.
The thought behind organizing a fourteen-day residential project was to collectivize different media 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 a presentation of their practices and sharing the last two decades of their works. Uma Banerjee, Priya Guha Roy, Supriyo Karmakar, Ashis Dhali and Rocky Majumder they present their performances. Finally, Arjun Kar a singer and songwriter, sung some his and other artists song of the radical working class. Apart from all of these students, songwriters, singers, theatre-practitioners, film-makers shared the community space by means of their expressions, towards developing a collective consciousness around contemporary art practice. It aims for strengthening the position of an artist as a catalyst to the creative understanding of mass along with upholding the ethos of collective solidarity.
