On 15 August 2020, FICA hosted a presentation by Soumya Sankar Bose on his photobook, Where the Birds Never Sing, a research project on the Marichjhapi Massacre. He was joined in conversation by writer and anthropologist Dr. Annu Jalais, and designer and filmmaker Barnali Bose, both of whom have been closely associated with the project.

Soumya Sankar Bose was awarded the Amol Vadehra Art Grant in 2019. The Amol Vadehra Art Grant is a production grant and is aimed at supporting an Indian artist under the age of 40 years to develop a body of works. The duration of the grant is one year and the funds of Rs 2 lakhs can be used to cover the artist’s direct costs towards creative development and production of a body of artworks. The grant allowed Soumya to continue his research into the Marichjhapi island massacre and its aftermath, to its culmination in the forms of photobook and a video.

Following the contrived history of the massacre, Soumya has utilized existing documentation through textual and visual material and portraits of survivors, engaging in archival research around the stories from the historically outcasted region and communities. Given the historically and archivally complex understanding that exists of the events, he has attempted to resurrect and explore histories and fictions. Via this presentation, Soumya spoke of his journey with the project, his intensive research, his encounters and conversations with survivors from the massacre, and his methodologies of mapping the tangents that emerged across various modes of remembrance.

This project was also supported by Magnum Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and India Foundation for the Arts under the Arts Practice Programme.

Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990). Lives and works in Kolkata. Bose holds a diploma in photography from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Dhaka. Bose was awarded the 2020 Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art's Amol Vadehra Art Grant; His photobook Where the Birds Never Sing was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. Bose was part of World Press Photo's Joop Swart Masterclass, 2019. In 2018, Bose was awarded Magnum Foundation’s Migration and Religion Grant preceded by Magnum Foundation’s Photography and Social Justice Fellowship award for his project Full Moon on a Dark Night in 2017. His project Let’s Sing an Old Song was awarded India Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2015 & 2017 and he was awarded the Toto Emerging Photographer of the Year award in 2015.

Bose’s work has been shown at several important exhibitions in India and abroad. Select solo and group exhibitions include Goethe-Institut's Five Million Incidents; Let’s Sing an Old Song, Experimenter Outpost, Kolkata, (all 2019); Full Moon on a Dark Night, Experimenter, Kolkata, Photo Kathmandu, Nepal; Houston Centre for Photography, Houston, Texas, (all 2018); Chitrabani, Kolkata, & Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata, (all 2016); Goa Photo; Delhi Photo Festival, (all 2015).