Broken Cogs in the Machine | A display by Anupam Roy
as part of the Emerging Artist Award 2018
The Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia was pleased to present an exhibition of works by Anupam Roy. Titled Broken Cogs in the Machine, the display is a culmination of Anupam's journey with the Emerging Artist Award which he received in 2018.
The exhibition was supported by Vadehra Art Gallery, and was open for public viewing at their contemporary art gallery (D-53, Defence Colony) from July 6 - August 5, 2022.
Anupam Roy’s art practice emerges from a continued engagement with grassroots politics that has led to the development of a vernacular vocabulary around modes of collaborative making, tools of resistance and a multitude of contexts around art and activism. Moving beyond conventional formats of display, his drawings and paintings are informed by a discursive, political witnessing and an awareness of the deep roots of systemic violence and injustice.
Through this exhibition, Anupam brought together an inventory of work encompassing a range of forms and explorations with media, looking at the historical constitution of the working class in the contemporary moment, its resident fragilities and its motile, migrant presence as a well-oiled cog across multiple terrains of functionality. It followed a concept of ‘brokenness’ that he believes addresses the experience of being part of a larger system while retaining a sense of individual agency and personhood. The cog, as it turns through systems, negotiates states of passivity and modes of organisation that require it to occupy certain strategies and directions. With this line of thought, Anupam used the cog as a pivot to argue the nature of ‘brokenness’ as an engagement with the political subject(ivity) of change, and more importantly, as a method of developing a self-reflexive artistic practice.
Broken Cogs in the Machine spoke to Anupam’s conversations with and within the expanses of movements, forms of protest, socio-economic identities and the binaries of language; it zeroes in on an attempt to think about representation by addressing the impossibilities of the same. Who are we within the institution? How do we take shape? For him, this exhibition appeared as a space of convening the various incapabilities of definition, differentiation and discourse, creating a stage to think of and encounter ways of being that meditate on what it means to break, resist, and remain broken.
About the artist:
Anupam Roy’s practice reflects his experiences and observations in the hinterlands of rural Bengal where he currently lives and works, the urban landscapes of metropolitan Delhi, as well as in Central and North Eastern India where he has engaged in regional political inquiry. He studied contemporary art at Ambedkar University, Delhi and did his second MA in Fine Art from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, supported by Charles Wallace Long term Scholarship. His works have been exhibited at several exhibitions including the 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage, New Museum, New York, and he had his first institutional solo show at Project 88 in 2019. He is the recipient of the 2018 FICA Emerging Artist Award. Anupam has a parallel practice as a designer of political posters, signage, and graffiti. He has conducted numerous workshops on the design and conception of political posters with different radical political and activist groups all over India.
To read more about the Emerging Artist Award click here.
The Politics of the Unrepresentable with Shukla Sawant, Santhosh S and Soumyabrata Choudhury, moderated by Anupam Roy
Sat, 16 July at Vadehra Art Gallery from 5 PM to 7 PM
Held in conjunction with Anupam’s ongoing exhibition at the gallery, titled Broken Cogs in the Machine, the panel addressed ideas, possibilities and concepts that constitute and complicate unrepresentability, taking cues from Anupam’s own art practice that seeks to delve deeper into the politics and testimonies of the same.
Figures of Brokenness with Shivangi Mariam Raj, Pinak Banik and Adam Turl
Thur, 28 July 2022 from 6 PM to 8 PM on Zoom
The idea of brokenness, in the context of Anupam’s practice, refers to the imminent collapse of the machinery of the society or the state due to the way some of its constitutive parts malfunction or underperform. Through the aegis of this discussion, we explored and read further the sociopolitical connotations and conflicts of the word and its associated contexts of functioning in our immediate environment, across world history and throughout different philosophical undertakings. The panel was an opportunity to think aloud about the subjective poetic and conceptual provocations that arise from the idea of brokenness, speaking to and alongside the various intersections that present themselves as part of Anupam’s practice.
Broken Cogs in the Machine: Closing Day Events
Thur, 4 August 2022 at Vadehra Art Gallery from 3 PM to 7 PM.
Our first performer was Nasir Hassan, an interdisciplinary artist based in Kashmir. He predominantly works with paintings, performances, and poetry.
Our second performance was led by three core members (Suvankar Gain, Saptak Mistri and Achinta Mondal) from the Banipur Art Society and Institute of Culture (BASIC), a cultural organization based in North 24 Parganas, Benapole-Petrapole, near the India-Bangladesh border. BASIC is a collective initiative to support regional cultural practitioners. They organise artist residencies and work with art projects that deal with the Motua Movement.
As a concluding act to the many dialogues initiated and conjured in the space, we also hosted a panel discussion on the question of collectives in contemporary art and politics with Sandip K Luis, Kavita Krishnan and Brahma Prakash.
