Sayan Chanda: Between the Two Fires
This spring, we are delighted to present Between the Two Fires, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Sayan Chanda (born 1989, Kolkata, India) at Cample Line. The exhibition brings together over 20 works, including new woven tapestry works, ceramics and drawings.
Sayan often draws upon the rituals he witnessed as a child and the living traditions with which he was surrounded when growing up in Kolkata, reimagining votive objects, folk narratives and indigenous rituals as hybrid ambiguous forms that function as totems, portals and talismans. Through weaving, stitching, dyeing and hand-building, he gives physical forms to mythologies and individual and collective memory. His Bohurupee, for instance, evoke Bengali folk masks made and worn by the Bohurupee community. Combining tight and compacted weave with bursts of loosened yarn, Cleo Roberts-Komireddi has suggested that they 鈥榟ave the potential to become bodies in themselves. Eye hollows serve as portals, the skirt of fibres as limbs.鈥�
In his textile work, Sayan often uses found clothes that can be of deep personal resonance, such as vintage Kantha quilts from Bengal, gamchhas or Jandami fabrics 鈥� deconstructing, knotting, folding, embroidering and weaving them into objects, reliefs and tapestries. His Jomi series 鈥� titled after the Bengali word for ground/land/field 鈥� was partly inspired by childhood memories of female elders reading poet Jasimuddin鈥檚 鈥楴akshi Kanthar Math鈥� (The Field of the Embroidered Quilt) (1928) to him.
Sayan has spoken about how as a child his grandmother and father used to tell him stories about how certain folk goddesses are worshipped and the associated objects in the rituals: 鈥榃hen I moved to London, this part of my life felt so far removed. With the distance, I realised how important these objects are to me and I naturally began to create forms from my memories, whether that be the memory of a folk performance I witnessed as a child from my balcony or the memories of holding these ritual objects between my hands. They have helped me investigate and understand how human sentiment is materialised in objects and the power they can hold. We often look at objects around us in a very sort of light touch way, but for me, objects become a sort of receptacle for my memories and thoughts.鈥�
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This spring, we are delighted to present Between the Two Fires, a solo exhibition by London-based artist Sayan Chanda (born 1989, Kolkata, India) at Cample Line. The exhibition brings together over 20 works, including new woven tapestry works, ceramics and drawings.
Sayan often draws upon the rituals he witnessed as a child and the living traditions with which he was surrounded when growing up in Kolkata, reimagining votive objects, folk narratives and indigenous rituals as hybrid ambiguous forms that function as totems, portals and talismans. Through weaving, stitching, dyeing and hand-building, he gives physical forms to mythologies and individual and collective memory. His Bohurupee, for instance, evoke Bengali folk masks made and worn by the Bohurupee community. Combining tight and compacted weave with bursts of loosened yarn, Cleo Roberts-Komireddi has suggested that they 鈥榟ave the potential to become bodies in themselves. Eye hollows serve as portals, the skirt of fibres as limbs.鈥�
In his textile work, Sayan often uses found clothes that can be of deep personal resonance, such as vintage Kantha quilts from Bengal, gamchhas or Jandami fabrics 鈥� deconstructing, knotting, folding, embroidering and weaving them into objects, reliefs and tapestries. His Jomi series 鈥� titled after the Bengali word for ground/land/field 鈥� was partly inspired by childhood memories of female elders reading poet Jasimuddin鈥檚 鈥楴akshi Kanthar Math鈥� (The Field of the Embroidered Quilt) (1928) to him.
Sayan has spoken about how as a child his grandmother and father used to tell him stories about how certain folk goddesses are worshipped and the associated objects in the rituals: 鈥榃hen I moved to London, this part of my life felt so far removed. With the distance, I realised how important these objects are to me and I naturally began to create forms from my memories, whether that be the memory of a folk performance I witnessed as a child from my balcony or the memories of holding these ritual objects between my hands. They have helped me investigate and understand how human sentiment is materialised in objects and the power they can hold. We often look at objects around us in a very sort of light touch way, but for me, objects become a sort of receptacle for my memories and thoughts.鈥�
Artists on show
