What would a Syrian or a Rohingya refugee have in common with an Indian girl born at the cusp of the country’s embrace of global economy — way, way after Independence in 1947, emotionally far removed from the pathos of displacement that the subcontinent’s Partition triggered? Not much, considering that as a 30-year-old urban Indian, Sudipta Das is as much a global citizen as her counterparts anywhere in a non-conflict zone — she is an independent artist based in Baroda, one of the three temples of art education in the country. Das is into the groove of the international artist residency scene and makes globally-informed choices while executing her art works. However, her solo show that opened at gallery Latitude 28 in New Delhi recently underscores the impact of the great contemporary refugee crisis on her mind. One of the most stand-out works on display is her interpretation of the wave of modern-day refugees, whose images television screens beam into living rooms daily across the globe. Das has revisited the world-renowned woodblock print, Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” 1829-1832, to symbolize the refugee crisis of the contemporary world. She has taken away the Great Wave from Japan, leaving Mt. Fuji behind (which is an important focal point of Hokusai’s work), and embedded dinghies carrying people through choppy waters. It is titled “The Great Shift.”“I was born in Assam, where my great grandfather had moved from the then unified Bengal. At that time, unified Bengal was a huge province of India, which was under the British rule. Bangladesh was not even imagined by the people of my great grandfather’s generation. By the time I was born, in 1985, the political map of the region had changed drastically. Since the creation of Bangladesh, there have been tensions in Indian states bordering the new country, against refugees who came in droves during the liberation war leading to the country’s creation in 1971. Growing up, I would often ask my mother if the family had some papers to prove that we came to India long back, even though I knew that for my parents and me, it didn’t really matter because we were born in India. That is why, when I see refugees from other parts of the world, I feel a certain empathy,” explains the artist. It must be noted that the artist’s personal fear of being labeled a refugee herself, is misplaced and the term that she uses to describe herself — “fourth-generation Bangladeshi migrant in India” — is actually misleading because Bangladesh did not exist four generations ago.However, her control of the artistic expression of the turmoil within is far more lucid, as is evident in her dozen works at the exhibition. Titled “The Surface of Memory,” the exhibition stands out for two primary reasons — the theme and the technique. The leitmotif is well articulated in other works, such as “Mobile House,” “Memory III,” two untitled works conveying a migrant’s sense of loss upon being forced to make a new home in an alien land, and his helplessness at being subsumed in a new sea of people in the new country. Soon enough, however, one has to take leave of the subject and urge Das to talk about the unique mode she employs to tell her story. A close look reveals that her works are made up of tiny bits of paper, all arranged intelligently to create the whole. Das, who holds a BFA and MFA from the Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan in Bengal, says, “I studied painting but about six-seven years ago, I started experimenting with torn paper. I think what propelled me in this direction was an act of my mother — she was reading a letter she had received via post and it contained something that she didn’t like. So, after she finished reading, she tore it up into tiny pieces. What she was doing, in fact, was denying the existence of truth. By tearing the letter away, she somehow consoled herself that what she had read didn’t exist. I used this analogy in the context of refugees and how by tearing important printed matter related to them, they deny themselves a past they have had to leave behind.” Das recalls the time she spent in Taiwan at the Pair-2 Artist Residency last year, where she created an installation that one could walk through. It was created from torn paper, which she had invited old Taiwanese women, who carried a lot of baggage of their early life spent in Japan, to tear. “I realized how cathartic the act is; the women were crying profusely while tearing paper printed with text that was relevant, that constituted some sort of memory,” she remembers. Paper has also been used in the form of pulp in certain canvases.The works are bathed in various shades of brown because Das tears paper, and then dips in coffee and tea water to achieve various shades, and then dries them in the sun to be used later; “just like pickles,” she says, adding, “Pickles too are a sort of memory of a season gone past.” The works, indeed, are profound.Even though visitors have seen hints of Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch in the way patterns take shape on Das’ canvases, her stories and the way she tells it, set her apart. It would be interesting to watch how she utilizes the brown palette in her future works, though. Or, would she have to use other colors once her storyboard becomes dense? This is only her first solo, but she would be worth a watch. The exhibition runs through August 30 at Latitude 28, F 208, Lado Sarai, New Delhi, Monday through Saturday, 11 am - 7 pm
↧