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Lot Essay
My ideas find their roots in my home region (Assam), in the people around me and the socio-political situation of the land. The independence of India came along with the historical partition of the subcontinent. The borders of the countries - Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India - were drawn on the basis of language, religion and caste and led to the birth of millions of identity-less people.
(Artist Statement, Made in India, Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, 2007, p. 182).
A highly political artist, Ashim Purkayastha's sensibilities are firmly rooted in everyday India. He uses his art to investigate society, and probe the complexities of national identity. The fragile, translucent, fragmented butterfly wings that are often seen in his work represent the delicacy of the balance between humanity, nature and the state - a delicacy heightened by the gold-flecked void of the background. The artist uses the metaphor of the detached, disjointed wings, isolated from a vital, unifying body, to symbolically question the flight or progress of a nation with no collective identity.
Born in Digboi, Assam, to a family of Bengali refugees, Purkayastha moved from Northeastern India to New Delhi. It is with the discerning eye of an outsider that he dissects contemporary culture, and according to art historian Ranjit Hoskote, "his works embody the dilemmas and tensions of operating in a border territory that has been marked and now demarcates itself as the space occupied by alia, [or] Other Things." (R. Hoskote, Ashim Purkayastha: Attached Wings, Exhibition Catalogue, Mumbai, India, 2004, p. 4).
(Artist Statement, Made in India, Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, 2007, p. 182).
A highly political artist, Ashim Purkayastha's sensibilities are firmly rooted in everyday India. He uses his art to investigate society, and probe the complexities of national identity. The fragile, translucent, fragmented butterfly wings that are often seen in his work represent the delicacy of the balance between humanity, nature and the state - a delicacy heightened by the gold-flecked void of the background. The artist uses the metaphor of the detached, disjointed wings, isolated from a vital, unifying body, to symbolically question the flight or progress of a nation with no collective identity.
Born in Digboi, Assam, to a family of Bengali refugees, Purkayastha moved from Northeastern India to New Delhi. It is with the discerning eye of an outsider that he dissects contemporary culture, and according to art historian Ranjit Hoskote, "his works embody the dilemmas and tensions of operating in a border territory that has been marked and now demarcates itself as the space occupied by alia, [or] Other Things." (R. Hoskote, Ashim Purkayastha: Attached Wings, Exhibition Catalogue, Mumbai, India, 2004, p. 4).