Septembre 2024 à mars 2025
Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990, Midnapore, India) is an artist based in Kolkata, India. He reconstructs archival materials and oral history into photography, films, alternative archives, and artist books. Bose’s hybrid mode of practice interweaving long-term research and engagement with local communities including his own family history accentuates certain subaltern experiences of the marginalised yet resilient in post-Partition Bengal. Enmeshing fiction and reality, Bose’s work opens up daring realms of memory, desire, vulnerability and identity. Soumya Sanker
Bose was awarded Magnum Foundation’s Social Justice Fellowship for Full Moon on a Dark Night in 2017 and received the Louis Roederer Discovery Public Award at Rencontres d'Arles for A discreet exit through darkness in 2023. Bose also received The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (Amol Vadehra Art Grant), The Agroecology Fund, Murthy Nayak Foundation Photobook Grant, Henry Luce Foundation grant and India Foundation for the Arts’ grant. Where the Birds Never Sing was selected as PHmuseum’s Best Photobooks of 2020 and shortlisted for the Paris Photo - Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award as well as the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2021. His works are in the permanent collections of The Royal Ontario Museum, The Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Les Rencontres d’Arles etc. Bose’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Art Review Asia, NPR, Granta, BBC, The Caravan and Indian Express among many others.
We Need to Talk in Whispers
Bose's new project 'We Need to Talk in Whispers' is a rigorous scrutiny of suicide cases from recent past.
These references found in various case studies, suicide notes, newspaper archives, court verdicts and oral memories intrigued Bose to visit various places in India such as, JoshiMath in Uttarakhand; Benaras in Uttar Pradesh; Darjeeling, Shantiniketan and Digha in West Bengal. Bose's camera plays the role of an imaginary investigator, delving deep into the psyche of the person who had committed the act. The dark alleyways, desolate sea-shores at night, empty hotel rooms that have remained locked for years, spiral staircases of long abandoned houses, cornices of multistoried educational institutions have accompanied Bose in his search. All these visuals contribute to the formation of an alternative archive of suicide.
BOSE, Soumya Sankar. The Former Heroes of Jatra, The Caravan, 2015.
https://caravanmagazine.in/author/soumya-sankar-bose
BOSE, Soumya Sankar. Let's sing an old song. Kolkata: Red Turtle Photobook, 2021. ISBN 978-1-5136-8884-8. Edition of 500 copies.
BOSE, Soumya Sankar. Where the Birds Never Sing. Kolkata: Red Turtle Photobook, 2020. ISBN 978-1-5136-6415-6. Edition of 600 copies.
Selected Exhibitions
2024 - 'Braiding Dusk and Dawn', curated by Erin Li, Delfina Foundation, London, U.K.. (Solo exhibition)
2023 - 'India today' curated by Filippo Maggia, Magazzino delle Idee, Trieste, Italy.
2023 - 'A Discreet Exit Through Darkness', curated by Tanvi Mishra, The Rencontres d'Arles, France.
2023 - 'A Discreet Exit Through Darkness', Experimenter Colaba, Mumbai, India, Mumbai Gallery Weekend. (Solo exhibition)
2023 - 'Notations of Time', curated by Sandhini Poddar and Sabih Ahmed, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai.
2021 - 'Where the Birds Never Sing', Experimenter Outpost, Sunderbans, India. (Solo exhibition)
2018 - 'Full Moon on a Dark Night', Experimenter, Kolkata, India. (Solo exhibition)
Filmography
'A Discreet Exit Through Darkness', Soumya Sankar Bose, a single channel 360/VR film, 51 minutes 17 seconds.
'Things We Lost Last Night', Soumya Sankar Bose, a three-channel film, 63 minutes.