Fine Art Awardees 2022: Ankit Ravani, Arpita Akhanda, Debashish Paul, Hrishitonoy Dutta, and Mallika Visvanathan

The Fine Art Awardees of 2022 are Ankit Ravani, Arpita Akhanda, Debashish Paul, Hrishitonoy Dutta, and Mallika Visvanathan.

Each artist offers and unique perspective of the world we live in via their individual practices. Ankit Ravani is interested in an individualistic understanding of collective trauma. Arpita Akhanda delves into multiple histories through themes of memory, trauma and migration. Debashish Paul explores the problems of queer identity in a society dominated by heterosexual norms. Hrishitonoy Dutta’s practice attempts to understand and interpret the changing environment through a spatial lens. And Mallika Visvanathan’s practice is invested in themes such as language, belonging and personal histories.

Ankit Ravani

Ankit Ravani is an is an artist and educator. Over the past few years his practice has been grounded in journaling and finding ways of reaching an individualistic understanding of collective trauma. He uses drawings, found objects, residues of performative gestures as still or moving images to generate fragmented narratives within spaces. His visuals comprise elements that present patterns and a displaced familiarity from his surroundings. Although this element of craft has been a sustained concern, his more recent engagements have come to echo this element in digital formats. They play with visuals located in the blurry lines between the gathered, staged, remembered, and documented.

Ravani (b. 1992) holds an MFA from Shiv Nadar University (2018), BVA in Painting from Faculty of Fine Arts M. S. University, Baroda (2016), and briefly studied Textile Design at Sir J.J school of arts, Mumbai (2012).

Anaesthesia studies, EPE foam and Pigments powders, 2018 -19

He has exhibited in ‘A State of Mind’ at Sakshi Art Gallery (Mumbai, 2021), VAICA 2 (Online, 2021), Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds (VMIS), 2020, ‘Call to Disorder’ at Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa, 2019), ‘Corpus, Image, and Inextricability’ at Art Konsult (New Delhi, 2019), and ‘Art- Poetry: Dialogues of Last Innocences’ in an interpretation by Tushar Joag at Instituto Cervantes (New Delhi, 2018) amongst others. He led the module ‘Methodologies of Art Making, and Thinking Through Finding’ in collaboration with Murli Dhar for the Kochi Student Biennale, and participated in Propositions #3 ‘Amongst Many Ruins’ – a module led by Rakhi Peswani with Reliable Copy (Online, 2020) and ‘The Storytellers’ with Foundation for Indian Contemporary Arts (FICA) and The Serendipity Arts Foundation (SAF) (New Delhi, 2018).

Ravani currently lives and works in Bangalore.

Arpita Akhanda

Arpita Akhanda works across mediums that include paper weavings, photography, performance, installation, drawing, and video. Her work delves into multiple histories through themes of memory, trauma and migration.

Akhanda (b. 1992) has been brought up in a family of artists who migrated from Bangladesh during partition and moved through many locations in India before settling in Cuttack, Odisha. Arpita completed her BFA & MFA in painting from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University (2015 & 2017).

She has been part of several national & international exhibitions few of the major show are শরীর | Körper : The memory collector, Kunstrum, Aarau, Switzerland; Of Liminal Beings and other spaces, Emami Art gallery, Kolkata; The Trifecta of Movement and The Lay of the Land, at Exhibit 320, New Delhi. One of her recent international participation was at Hub India, Artissima International Fair of Contemporary Art at Torino, Italy.

The Fall, Paper Weave, Archival print of pre & post-partition maps, 40 x 60 inches each approx, 2021

Akhanda has performed at Texting Being, Theertha International Performance Platform, Colombo, Srilanka and Human Ecology and Art, 3rd Multidisciplinary Art show, Bangladesh.

She is selected as a part of India Art Fair Artist in Residence program 2022, Artist in Residence program Gästeatelier Krone, Aarau, Switzerland in association with Khoj Kolkata in the year 2021 and Piramal Art Residency in 2019-20.

She is a recent recipient of Emerging Artist Award 2020 extended support platform, from FICA and Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation 2021, State Award Fellowship in New Media from Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation, 2019 and is also a recipient of National Scholarship by CCRT Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India in Painting, 2016.

She lives and works from Santiniketan, West Bengal.

Debashish Paul

Debashish Paul’s practice explores the problems of queer identity in a society dominated by heterosexual norms. He works across mediums including sculpture, performance, video, and drawing. He seeks to expand and explore the tabooed conception of homosexuality by unveiling the body, treating it as a tender landscape, and generating new references to queer identities. Working in the method of automatism. Paul’s recent sculptural costumes and connected performances indicate no specific gender orientation, male or female, are in fact, the sensible screens, which both conceal and reveal fragile emotions and desires, always in conflict with society.

Paul (b. 1994) is the Nadia district in West Bengal. He has completed his BFA from The Indian college of Art and Draftsmanship, in sculpture, Kolkata, and recently completed his Master’s degree in sculpture from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi (2021).

A still from the performance based video Beyond The Body And Gender I
Video – 6min 56sec
Sculpture Dress - Nepali Handmade Paper, cloth, watercolor , charcoal,
2021

Paul was has received several awards such as, Allegro 1st prize, Contemporary LYNX, Poland; Of Liminal Beings and Other Spaces -2021, Emami Art, Kolkata, India Artist Relief Fund-2021 (MAP in partnership with 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery) ;Student's Biennale -2021, Kochi, Kala Sakshi Workshop-2021, Emami Art Open Call Exhibition -2020, Kolkata.

Hrishitonoy Dutta

Hrishitonoy Dutta is visual artist and researcher. He is interested in constructing a new sense of ‘nature’ and rationality. His work tries to understand and interpret the changing environment through a spatial lens. He is interested in the role of art as a form of pedagogical research, looking at movement, plurality and collectivity in a time filled with social, political and environmental precarity. Several elements of his work draw inspiration from anime and science fiction, often questioning the seemingly objective nature of science and how knowledge is produced.

Guerilla Drawing, 2 minutes, stop-motion video, 2020

Dutta has an MA in Visual Art from Ambedkar University Delhi and a Bachelor’s in Visual Art from College of Fine Arts, Bangalore. His education in Visual Arts has helped him to discover and investigate different materials, mediums, concerns and questions to translate his love for animals through storytelling.

He is one of the founding members of Uppu collective, a collective working in the space of intersectional science through dialogue, collaboration and fermentation. The collective focusses on conversations around biodiversity, geopolitics and conservation advocacy through grassroot level interventions. Over the course of the pandemic, he has facilitated a host of workshops and interactive sessions with children hailing from the Garbhanga Forest Reserve, Assam. His collective aspires to encourage and empower their students in believing in the knowledge they already possess, as they are the rightful custodians of the forest.

He is the recipient of the Serendipity Arts Foundation’s Visual Arts Research Grant, 2020.

Mallika Visvanathan

Mallika Visvanathan is an independent filmmaker and researcher. An early career documentary filmmaker, her practice is invested in themes such as language, belonging and personal histories. In terms of form, she is interested in the relationship between images and words.

After completing her post-graduation in Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, she received training in filmmaking at the Creative Documentary Course, SACAC. Following this, she worked at the Sarai programme, CSDS, from 2019–2021, on a project funded by ICAS MP titled Media in Times of War. As a part of the project, she collected and annotated archival materials with reference to the representation of war in independent India, with a special focus on the documentary films produced by the Films Division of India.