Painting The Partition With Sudipta Das

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The great shifting, 2016, water colour, coffee wash, pulp, acid-free paper on board

Sudipta Das

The great shifting, 2016, water colour, coffee wash, pulp, acid-free paper on board

Memory - III, 2016, water colour, coffee wash, pulp, acid-free paper on board

Memory - III, 2016, water colour, coffee wash, pulp, acid-free paper on board

For this Assam-born artist, being a fourth-generation migrant from Bangladesh has a significant impact on most of her creations. “I have grown up with accounts of ‘opar Bangla’, inherited from my ancestors. My father has told me about the travails of revolutionaries who fought for their rights to speak their mother tongue in the Bhasha Andolon or language movement. Learning about the hardships of the Bengal partition and subsequent migration have shaped me as an artist,” says 31-year-old Sudipta Das.

Her latest show, The Surface of the Memory, includes a collection of intricate artworks — created with watercolours, coffee wash and acid-free paper. Drawing from her personal history, her creations portray those uprooted from their lands around the world and their trials. Explains Das, “The process behind my paintings is twofold. First comes tearing and seasoning of the paper in various ways. To me, the physical act of tearing paper has a metaphorical connection to my fragmented thoughts. The second is the mental journey I go through…. I would like the viewer to travel down the vistas of their own memories, and cull out new perspectives on past events and the present through my art.”

The Surface of the Memory is on display at Latitude 28, New Delhi until September 10, 2016.