Insoluble Time
In the works in ‘Insoluble Time’, artists spanning different generations weave intricate narratives that embrace humanity's shared concerns, navigating through the conflicts of contemporary times. The intricate narratives of strife resonate with a shared concern for humanity's fate and the future. The shifting notions of nationhood worldwide and the fractures in secularism and democracy evoke an urgent need to rekindle and reaffirm the bedrock principles of justice, democracy, and humanity. The works in ‘Insoluble Time’ offer poetic and profound insights into our shared human experience.
Shahidul Alam, one of the most influential photographers of our time, captures vignettes of political events and ecological shifts in South Asia through his photographs taken towards the turn of the last century. Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri’s abstract works invoke a sense of the mysterious landscape enmeshed with appalling memories. They summon landscapes enshrouded in haunting memories adorned with geometric patterns that echo terrains marked by motion, intrusion, and disputes. The burden of the unreasonable social conditions and injustice droops the working class figures in Anjan Modak’s drawings and paintings. They depict a world of working-class people and their toil and suffering under the yoke of neoliberal capitalism. Ali Akbar’s compelling collages speak of overlapping narratives of Identity, memory, solitude and violence, connecting local histories of land and critiquing the political narratives of contemporary times. He explores experiences revolving around memories, places, people and architecture. Born in a family of artists who migrated from Bangladesh during the partition, the recurring themes of Arpita Akhand’s works are memory, history and migration. She uses paper weaving as a medium, signifying the presence of close-knit memories that question and affirm identity and existence.
ARTISTS' BIO
Ali Akbar P N (b. 1996)
Ali Akbar P N was born in 1996 in Koolimuttam, Central Kerala. The artist has obtained his MVA in Painting from Maharaja Sayaji Rao University, Vadodara, Gujarat 2020 and BFA in Painting from the Govt. College of Fine Arts Thrissur, Kerala 2018. He works extensively in collages, videos and artists’ books, and his work revolves around memory, identity, alienation, and desire.
Ali Akbar won the first award at the annual all-India open call awards and exhibition Imaginarium 2.0 atEmami Art Kolkata 2022. Emami Art also exhibited Ali Akbar at the India Art Fair, 2023 and the Architecture Digest Design Show in December 2022, Mumbai.
He has participated in many exhibitions, including Fault Lines: Visual Symptoms of Discordances in Indian History at Conflictorium, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Embark, 2023, Baroda; India Art Fair 2023, New Delhi; Baroda Anuelle 2023, Gallery White Vadodara; From Where All That Sweat? , Trivandrum 2022; The Flying Goat Show, Goa 2022; Open Studio, Baroda 2021; Untitled III Online Exhibition, Priyasri Art Gallery Mumbai 2020; Nasreen Mohammedi Studio Display, MSU Baroda 2019 – 2020; Prologue 18 Final Display, Govt. College of Fine Arts Thrissur 2018; Kala Mela Art Exhibition, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi 2018; Group Show in Onyx Art Gallery, Kochi 2017; Kasthuri Sreenivasan Trust Annual Show, Coimbatore 2017.
He currently resides and works in Vadodara, Gujarat, India.
Anjan Modak (B.1982)
Born in 1982 in West Bengal, India, Anjan Modak is a noted contemporary painter based in Kolkata. He studied painting at Rabindra Bharati University, graduating in 2009. He has been the subject of two solo shows, ‘Fragmented Life’ (2020) and ‘Black, White and More’ (2016), held at Emami Art, Kolkata and a duo show, ‘Between the Self and Silhouettes’, curated by Adip Duttaat Emami Art (Kolkata, 2022). In addition, his work has been featured in numerous significant group exhibitions at Emami Art (Kolkata, 2021); Tamarind Art Gallery (New York, 2008, 2010); Habitat Foundation (New Delhi, 2008); CIMA Gallery (Kolkata, 2017, 2019); ICCR (Kolkata, 2014); among many others. His exhibition of over twenty-five paintings, ‘The Common Man,’ was shown at the India Art Fair (New Delhi, 2020).
Modak has been selected for the 2024 Alex Brown Foundation Residency Program.
Anjan Modak’s works are part of major private collections in India and abroad.
He lives and works in Kolkata.
Arpita Akhanda (b. 1992)
Arpita Akhanda, born and brought up in a family of artists who migrated from Bangladesh during the partition, moved through many locations in India before settling in Cuttack, Odisha. She completed her B.F.A & M.F.A in painting from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, 2015 & 2017.
Her notable group exhibitions include Art Dusseldorf 2023; India Art Fair 2023; Rivers and Roads: Meandering Stories of India, at AAIE Center for Contemporary Art, Rome (2022 – 23); AD Design show 2022 in Mumbai, Hub India, Artissima International Fair of Contemporary Art at Torino, Italy, in 2021; Körper: The memory collector, Kunstrum, Aarau, Switzerland; Of Liminal Beings and other spaces, curated by Ushmita Sahu, Emami Art gallery, Kolkata; The Trifecta of Movement at Exhibit 320, New Delhi; The Lay of the Land, Exhibit320, New Delhi. Akhanda has performed at various museums, art fairs and cultural institutes, including Jan Van Eyck Academie, Netherlands, 2023; AAIE Center for Contemporary Art, Rome (2022 – 23); India Art Fair 2022, New Delhi; Piramal Art Residency 2019-20, Maharashtra.
She is a recipient of the 2022-23- Prince Claus Seed Fund. She was part of the India Art Fair Artist in Residence program 2022, New Delhi; Inlaks Fine Art Award 2022; Artist in Residence program 2021 Gästeatelier Krone, Aarau, Switzerland, in association with Khoj Kolkata; and Piramal Art Residency 2019-20, Mumbai; Emerging Artist Award 2020, FICA and Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation 2021; State Award Fellowship in New Media from Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation, 2019 and is also a recipient of National Scholarship by CCRT Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India in 2016.
Some of her works belong to major museums, private collections and art foundations, including Museum Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21, Dusseldorf, Germany, Piramal Foundation and Emami Group.
Shahidul Alam (b. 1955)
Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018 and National Geographic Explorer at Large, photographer, writer and curator Shahidul Alam has championed human rights throughout his career. Recipient of the Shilpakala Award, the highest national award given to Bangladeshi artists, Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. A former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam’s work has been exhibited in leading galleries like MOMA, Centre Georges Pompidou and Tate Modern. A speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, Alam is a visiting professor of Sunderland University and RMIT and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He has chaired the international jury of World Press Photo. He has also received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Arts London. His book "The Tide Will Turn" was on the New York Times list of "Best Art Books of 2020". Alam is the founder of the Drik Picture Library, the Pathshala Media Institute, the Majority World Agency and the Chobi Mela Festival of Photography.
Considered a ‘Prisoner of Conscience’, he was arrested in 2018 for criticising his government and spent 107 days in jail but was released on bail following a massive international campaign for his release. In 2020, Alam won the International Press Freedom Award conferred by the Committee to Protect Journalists and, in 2021, the inaugural CASE Award for Humanitarian of the Year.
Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri (b. 1944)
Born in 1944 in West Bengal, Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri studied Applied Arts at the Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, graduating in 1966. He took training in design under Helena Perheentupa, a Finnish Designer at NID, Ahmedabad, from 1968-69 and Graphic Art under Geoffrey Bowman at San Jose State University, California, from 1984-85. He taught at the textile design department at NID from 1981-82 and later at Kala Bhavana Visva Bharati University Santinketan from 1990 to 2009. Karchaudhuri worked for two decades at the Weavers Service Centres in Varanasi, Bhagalpur and Kolkata between 1969 and 1989.
He has been the subject of several solo shows at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata (1968, 1973). San Jose State University Gallery, California, USA (1985); Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (1998); Shajahan Art Gallery, New Delhi (1998); 'Tapestry, Drawing and Painting', at Nandan, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan (2016) and Nymphs and Other Ethereal Images at Gallery Charubasona, Kolkata (2023). His work has been featured in several group exhibitions, including Four Artists Group Show, sponsored by the American University Centre (1974); Five Artists Group Show at Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata (1978); 'Selected Painters of Kolkata', organised by TATA centre, Kolkata (1979), Sixth Bharat Bhavana Biennial of Contemporary Indian Art, Bhopal, M.P. (1997); 'Artists from Santiniketan' organised by La-Maier Art Gallery, Kolkata (1998), 'The Art of Santiniketan: Masters and Emerging Artists at the Royal College of Art', London (2008) and many more.
Karchaudhuri was part of the British Textile Biennial 2023. His recent survey-scale exhibition, The Dream of an Idiot, was held at Emami Art, Kolkata, in 2023.
Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri lives and works in Santiniketan.
