Project_Space | Artist-in-Residence: Niroj Satpathy
Niroj's practice is centred around an obsessive engagement with materials designated as waste, exploring their transformative, ephemeral and expressive qualities. Over the years his home/studio has turned into a chaotic repository of more than 5000 objects, some scrounged from the streets, old shops and landfills, others donated by friends, family and strangers. His five-year stint as night supervisor at the MCD Solid Waste Management Department (2013-18) gave him an up-close consideration of garbage and waste as a lens to read the city. His studio has also often functioned as a public space, having hosted community gatherings, performances, discussions, exhibitions and more. Leaving aside the familiar accumulation of the studio, Niroj will extend his explorations of process, material, temporality, and individual and collective labour at the Project_Space through June.
Niroj Satpathy has a BFA in Painting from BK Art College of Fine Arts, Bhubaneswar. He also has a MFA in Painting and Visual Arts from Utkal University of Culture, Bhubaneswar. Recent exhibitions include DHALAO (2018); Could be Urbanism with Naveen Mahantesh and WALA, at Khoj (2018); Hangar for the Passerby, at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2017). He has also taken part in several public art projects (Bhubaneswar Art Trail (B80), 2018) and performances (Harkat (2012) at CSDS; Kala Pani (2015 & 2017)), much of his art work being in collaborative work and community projects.
Collaborating with Supriyo Karmakar
Our Artist-in-Residence Niroj Satpathy has been hard at work at Project_Space to create an appropriate setting for his experiments with objects and materials.
He has invited Surpiyo Karmakar to work alongside him. Having worked extensively with kinetic art, Supriyo's practice adds elements of movement and sound to Niroj's current explorations of material, temporality, and process. At Project_Space, their intersecting practices will entail a commentary on the afterlives of personal objects in new contexts and continuities.
Supriyo is a recent graduate in painting from University of Kalyani. Most recently he was part of a collaborative project with four other artists from West Bengal, titled 'Wave of the City' which showed at the Students' Biennale 2018-19 in Kochi.
Drawing Walks with Gagan Singh
Notions of place, space and context underlie Niroj’s approach to the expanse of the city and the objects that he collects from it. Artist Gagan Singh was invited to collaborate with Niroj by leading ‘Drawing Walks’ into the neighbourhoods of Lado Sarai and Saiyad-ul-Ajaib. They prompted several conversations around memory and observation, narratives and historicity, urbanism and its future possibilities. Most importantly, these walks toyed with the notions of the act of drawing as ‘mark-making’ and the subliminal, performative aspects of walking itself.
Gagan Singh is a Delhi-based artist exploring drawing through acts of working on site, the book format, writing and workshops. He is a graduate from the Kent Institute of Art and Design. He navigates contemporary art spaces through interventions that challenge formality and accepted conventions. He conceives of his images as ‘lines' that draw themselves out.’
OPEN STUDIO
Through June, Niroj extended his ongoing explorations of process, objects, memories, material, temporality, and individual and collective labour while also becoming attuned to the spatial logic and material accumulations in and around Lado Sarai, the neighbourhood where FICA is located. His collaborations with Gagan Singh and Supriyo Karmakar have helped him realise various aspects of these explorations.
The Open Studio went live on 10 July. It is an invitation into Niroj's imagined world grounded in the everyday.
The Studio is open for viewing till 27 July 2019.
You can access the curatorial note here.
We are open from Monday to Saturday, 10.30 a.m to 6 p.m.
CLOSING WEEK EVENTS
Sonic Performance by Indira Lakshmi Prasad
Niroj Satpathy @ Project_Space | Closing Events Week
Saturday, 17 August 2019 | 6:30 PM onwards
Niroj Satpathy’s engagement at Project_Space began in the month of June, garnering collaborations, reflections, and dialogues with various people and practices. Through a two month-long artist residency, Niroj brought together an exhibit in response to the space, highlighting his intense relationship with collecting and objecthoods. This was followed by a curated programme of events with workshops, walks, and film screenings, situated around acts of collective meaning-making and dispersion.
As a culmination to the variety of tangents explored through the residency, FICA invites you to our series of closing events - an immersive sonic performance by artist Indira Lakshmi Prasad. Exploring aspects of ‘found sound’ to create a sonic mapping of the exhibit, Indira’s performance will be in conversation with the particularities of the space, creating a sensory environment in response to Niroj’s accumulations of material objects.
Screening of The Colour of Pomegranates (1969)
dir. Sergio Parajanov
Tuesday, 20 August 2019 | 6 pm onwards
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes