Artists for Artists

Experimenter presents Artists for Artists, four solo projects across both gallery spaces in Kolkata:

At Experimenter – Ballygunge Place:

Ten sounds I cannot hear by Aishwarya Arumbakkam selected by Sohrab Hura

Sunlight by Sathish Kumar selected by Sohrab Hura

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes by Rupali Patil selected by Rathin Barman

At Experimenter – Hindustan Road:

Fever by Rai selected by Bhasha Chakrabarti

Each practitioner has been selected by an artist from the gallery’s program. The exhibition attempts to establish how artists, whether through long-form conversations in each other’s studios or outside of the confines of their workplaces, can yield generous and productive ground for experimentation and sustained dialogue. Artists for Artists marks Experimenter’s 16th anniversary and is rooted in the gallery’s commitment to amplifying diverse practices, a value that has been pivotal to its programming over the years.

Rai

Fever

Selected by Bhasha Chakrabarti

Experimenter – Hindustan Road, Kolkata

Rai works across various media such as images, text, and installations. In her project Fever, she presents parts from three ongoing bodies of work—Fever, Search Party, and Ngan & Nilnil—which underscore her long-standing inquiry into movement, inheritance, belonging, and becoming. The works explore ways of how we notice, absorb, and relate to the world around us and how its vastness influences the intimate. The paintings and photographs in the series Fever focus on a state of transformation and a disruption of the body’s rhythm through familial threads. Search Party brings together an array of elements that are layered with traces—some visible, others concealed—through a video installation and found objects. In Ngan & Nilnil, which includes drawings and paintings, Rai renders sites of simultaneous presence and absence, where memory becomes a connecting node.

Rai, b.1993; lives and works in Goa, India.

Rupali Patil

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes

Selected by Rathin Barman

Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, Kolkata

Trained as a printmaker, Rupali Patil explores various mediums in her practice, redefining their boundaries through a socio-political lens. Her works focus on how women’s bodies—their fluidity, symbiotic relationship, and interconnectedness—are impacted by environmental degradation and capitalist structures. Patil is pursuing her ongoing inquiry of the challenges faced by female sugarcane workers, specifically in the Beed district of Maharashtra, where their health is disproportionately affected by social and economic pressures of industrialisation. She often uses ecofeminism as a framework for understanding the woman’s body as a tangible entity. In If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes, Patil presents new drawings that span various stages of her practice and a new sculptural installation. While one body of work depicts shifting landscapes and the space held by architecture within them, another exhibited at Patil’s recent solo exhibition in Berlin, explores fluid corporeality in search of a more potent and powerful force, invoking references to menstruation. Her sculptures in the exhibition draw attention to unacknowledged labour, both human and ecological, drawing a parallel between mycelial networks and feminine contributions, which are often undervalued.

Rupali Patil, b.1984; lives and works in Pune, India.

Aishwarya Arumbakkam
Ten sounds I cannot hear
Selected by Sohrab Hura
Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, Kolkata

In Aishwarya Arumbakkam’s practice, photography shapes her connection to the physical world, tethering her to things that worry and excite her, that she longs for, and wants to hold on to. In Ten sounds I cannot hear, she uses photography, video, printmaking, and drawing to build and maintain a close connection with her parents across continents, in the United States and India. Using repeatedly mediated imagery, Arumbakkam shows a complex view of immigration where she and her loved ones are faced with the obstacle of separation while trying to preserve a sense of closeness. The title of the series is inspired by a folder in her archive of photographic and audio material, recorded with her parents over a screen, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the process of making digital time into physical objects, Arumbakkam attempts to shrink the distance that separates her from her ageing mother and father, and lengthen the time she has left with them.

Aishwarya Arumbakkam, b. 1988 lives and works in Chennai, India.

Sathish Kumar

Sunlight

Selected by Sohrab Hura

Experimenter – Ballygunge Place, Kolkata

Sathish Kumar’s foray into photography began in his youth when he spent his school holidays in his uncle’s photography studio in Bengaluru. He photographed everyday moments and scenes, like school picnics, cricket grounds, and his friends, with a point-and-shoot camera that his uncle gifted him. Kumar continues to capture seemingly ordinary things through his practice, which is best summarised in his own words as “a record of his everyday existence, all encounters and journeys, and an expression of himself, his life, and the world around him.” Sunlight is an ongoing body of work that Kumar began during the COVID-19 pandemic as a response to the unease and anxiety that he experienced in confinement. Hope took the form of sunlight, gently easing out the darkness from his mind. Kumar’s photographs from this period are symbolic of his gradual journey from the stillness of lockdown to the post-pandemic years. His subjects are varied—loved ones, sites in Hampi, Kanchipuram, and Chennai, as well as light in its various forms. This body of work has helped Kumar find balance amidst his contrasting feelings of hope and anxiety, where each image is connected by a moment in time.

Sathish Kumar, b.1986; lives and works in Chennai, India.

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Artists for Artists: Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Sathish Kumar, Rupali Patil, Rai

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Artists for Artists | Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Sathish Kumar, Rupali Patil, Rai

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