Praneet Soi’s presents a new work created in his ongoing immersion with craftsmen in Kashmir. The craft of painting on wood cuts and papier-mache, introduced to Srinagar by Sufi preachers traveling to Kashmir from Central Asia in medieval times, captivated Soi to work with the master craftsman Fayaz Jan in the traditional Karkhana, or studio to produce wood cuts or hand-made papier-mache tiles and painting upon them traditional Kashmiri motifs. Ever since his first immersion with the craftsmen in 2014, Soi has been returning to Srinagar to intertwine himself within the Karkhana’s working rhythm, making decisions with the craftsmen pertaining to the motifs, such as their color and composition, that are historically recognizable within the region’s craft industry, but which push away from their original decorative trajectory into what might be described as experimental compositions. Soi often-times introduces his own imagery into the conversation, opening up interesting possibilities to explore with craftsmen. These are hybrid constructions, containing within them not only conversations between Soi and the craftsmen but also the histories of patterns as they migrated across geography and culture in times gone by.

Praneet Soi was born in Kolkata in 1971. Soi moved to the Netherlands in 2002 to attend the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten, a two-year international residency program for artists and currently divides his time between Amsterdam and Kolkata. This oscillatory movement impacts his practice. Soi identifies over time, patterns that emerge from an investigation of his extended social and economic landscape and explores these across a multidisciplinary oeuvre. Interactive processes are important to Soi. He designed for certain of his installations drawing machines encouraging audiences to draw. The artist, in partnership with the Mondrian Foundation, set up in his hometown of Kolkata a residency for Netherlands based artists, thus connecting his two environments. Recent activities include participation at the 12th Berlin Biennale (2022) with an installation titled “Paraphernalia”, “Centurion” at Positions # 6: Bodyworlds at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, (2020-21) and “Anamorphosis: Notes from Palestine, Winter in the Kashmir Valley” at the Mosaic Rooms in London (2019). This exhibition was followed by an eponymously titled publication with Book Works UK. He was in 2021 resident at the Luceberthuis in Bergen, North Holland. Soi is participating in a long-term residency titled Aspects of Madness granted by the Al Qattan Foundation in Palestine which has him visit the region for a month annually for the coming 3 years.