Arpita Akhanda

Arpita Akhanda is a young contemporary Indian artist from Cuttack, Odisha and is based in Santiniketan. Her work involves photography, performance and paper weaving to deal with the relationship between our present and past trauma through exploring inter-generational memories/knowledge systems, inherited family archives, and search for a home. Born into a family with the traumatic memory of displacement and forced migration during the Partition of India in 1947, Akhanda strives to understand how the body preserves and transmits colonial and postcolonial recollections over generations.

Performative photography forms the core of her artistic practice, employing mise-en-scène as a tool to embody the various characters that inhabit her paternal grandfather's photo album dating back to the partition of India. Performance is adapted as a process to excavate, investigate, and revisit institutional and personal history and memories. Arpita Akhanda constructs the relationship between time and place, movement and settlement, and self and the geo-body through her work. Revisiting the past and memories through her performance-based practice Akhanda tries to understand and analyze the politics of sociopolitical identity as it is defined, molded, or discarded by history.

During her time at Jester, Arpita will be continuing her postcard research. "Memory of Genk", the local library's collection of postcards will serve her to examine the format of the postcards as tools for collecting memories. In addition, she is eager to investigate the history of Belgian pressed glass, particularly pieces made for export to India during the 19th and early 20th century, with a specific focus on glass produced by the Val Saint Lambert factory and exported to West Bengal, where she now resides in India.

Arpita Akhanda has performed in major spaces around the world. Highlights include Huis Marseille Museum of Photography, (Amsterdam, NL), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K21 Museum (DE), Jan Van Eyck Academie (NL), AAIE Center for Contemporary Art & Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (IT), Teertha International Performance Platform (Sri Lanka) and Chittagong Art College (Bangladesh, IN).

Akhanda has exhibited in several group exhibitions, including Paanch, Cinci, Fünf, Wǔ, Cinque, Galerie Russi Klenner, Berlin (DE); Imaging Arriving Departing, Exhibit 320, New Delhi (IN); RIVERS AND ROAD: Meandering Stories of India, AAIE Center for Contemporary Art, Rome (IT); Art Düsseldorf, represented by Emami Art (DE); Hub India, Artissima International Fair of Contemporary Art at Torino (IT); Körper: The Memory Collector, Kunstrum, Aarau, (CH); Of Liminal Beings and other spaces, Emami Art gallery, Kolkata (IN).

She was part of the Hampi Art Labs, Karnataka, 2024; Jan Van Eyck Residency in Maastricht (NL), 2022-23, Inlaks Fine Art Award Residency, Bangalore (IN), 2022, India Art Fair's residency program, New Delhi (IN), 2022, Gastatelier Krone, Aarau (CH), 2021; Piramal Art Residency, Maharashtra (IN), 2020. She is a recipient of Third Edition of The Arts Family Emerging Artist Award-South Asia, The Arts Family, London, 2024; MASH Young Artists' Award (IN), 2023; Prince Claus Seed Award, Prince Claus Fund (NL), 2022; Inlaks Fine Art Award, Inlaks Foundation (IN), 2022; Emerging Artist Award extended support platform from FICA & MMF (IN), 2020-21.

Image information:

1. Sruti Smriti, 2024, 82 x 46 inches approx
   Handwoven loom tapestry with recycle plastic,cotton fiber and cassette tape
2. Hath-Pakha, 2023 (and ongoing)
   Silkscreen print, Hand fan, Speaker, digital screen
3. Dendritic Data I, 2024, 69 x 50 inches approx. each
   Paper weaving Archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper 100% cotton 310 gsm‍
4. Transitory Body, 2023
   Performed at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Museum (K21), Dusseldorf, Photo: Linda Inconi
5. 360 minutes of requiem, 2022
   Performed at The studio, India Art Fair Grounds​ (2 days, 3 hours)‍
6. 240 hours, 2021
   Photographs, Site specific photo-performance and text‍
7. Transitory Body: the memory collector, 2020
   Site-specific interactive and durational performance (4 hours)

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