Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990) reconstructs archival materials and oral history into photography, films, alternative archives, and artist books. His hybrid mode of practice interweaving long-term research and engagement with local communities including his own family history accentuates certain subaltern experiences of the marginalised yet resilient in post-Partition Bengal.

Through the film and the photographs from A Discreet Exit Through Darkness, Bose seeks to delve deep into the darkest recesses of his family’s history and examine the various enmeshed narratives by recounting a telling episode. The work also offers an insight into how imagination, folklore and superstition supplant the lack of a coherent narrative when memory fails to navigate the scarred terrains of an obscure past. It evocatively brings alive a time, torn asunder by the impending personal and political upheaval around the Bangladesh Liberation War and reflects on how collective memory becomes instrumental in substantiating a tale mired with irreparable losses and brutal chronicles.

Soumya Sankar Bose lives and works in Kolkata, India.

Select solo and group exhibitions include Braiding dawn and dusk, Delfina Art Foundation, London (2024); When Images Take Care, Centre de la photographie, Genève (2024); A Discreet Exit Through Darkness, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Arles and Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai & Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, Kolkata (2023); India Today, Magazzino delle Idee, Trieste (2023); Belfast Photo Festival, Belfast (2023), Where The Birds Never Sing, Experimenter Outpost, Kolkata (2021); Goethe-Institut’s Five Million Incidents (2019); Let’s Sing an Old Song, Experimenter Outpost, Kolkata, (2019); Full Moon on a Dark Night, Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata (2018); Photo Kathmandu, Nepal (2018); Houston Centre for Photography, Houston, (2018); Chitrabani, Kolkata (2016); Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata (2016); Goa Photo (2015); Delhi Photo Festival (2015), among others.