Things We Lost Last Night - Exhibition by Soumya BOSE

Things We Lost Last Night a three-channel film, immerses us in the artist’s quest to uncover the forgotten echoes of his mother’s mysterious disappearance in 1969 at the age of nine, a void that lasted three years amidst the political turbulence of West Bengal. Her interior monologue unearths an endless saga of loss, trauma, and imagination.
Her recollections bring back the memory of her father who succumbed to his grief in his process of searching for his daughter. A one-eyed old woman speaks ceaselessly into the void. Religious scriptures crumble to dust as natural disasters wash away ancient temples. The hum of a forlorn woman and a television set, trapped in time, slips into oblivion. The corridor stands still, waiting for the doorbell to ring. The possibilities of an unforeseen future swing from the womb of the past. The artist continues to search for coherence in his mother’s fragmented narrative.

Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990, Midnapore, India) is a Kolkata-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, film, alternative archives, and artist books. By reconstructing archival materials and oral histories, Bose develops a hybrid narrative framework that seamlessly integrates rigorous research with meaningful engagement with local communities, including his own family history. His work illuminates subaltern experiences in post-Partition Bengal, shedding light on the resilience of marginalized voices. Combining fiction, reality, and social science theory, Bose navigates intricate landscapes of memory, desire, vulnerability, and identity, fostering a compelling dialogue between the past and the present.

Soumya Sankar Bose was awarded Magnum Foundation’s Social Justice Fellowship for Full Moon on a Dark Night in 2017, was Hello! India’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2023, and received the Louis Roederer Discovery Public Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles for A Discreet Exit through Darkness in 2023.