Entering the Experimenter Outpost at Alipore Museum and witnessing the grandeur and simplicity of Rathin Barman’s new array of works was all about seeing childhood nostalgia flash by the eyes. Drawing from the idea of North Calcutta houses, social constructs, migration, displacement and more, the exhibition titled The cage broke, and I found the horizon is layered, personal and talks of finding vanishing elements. Rathin’s exhibition also marks the special occasion of the opening of the third Experimenter centre in the heart of the Alipore Museum.
How Rathin Barman's new solo at Experimenter Outpost dwells in fragmented memory and speaks of a steadily vanishing Calcutta?
The installation, We played even at night, is the voice of migration. Made with a mild steel sheet, reclaimed wood and steel from demolished buildings, it is a representation of the claustrophobic shanties which many are compelled to call home in the wake of social displacement. Kitchen stories, on the other hand, is a collection of watercolour-on-paper drawings, which give a peek into the grandmother’s kitchens and how even the simplest ingredients are a testament to memory, pain and happiness.
Up ahead is a floor-to-ceiling installation of multiple white tiles with brass inlays and green sheds called Restructured Living Space that highlights the changing facets of North Calcutta’s Zamindar baris. The long columns, the tilted window sills, and the large ceilings are a remnant of the vanishing colonial architecture which was once a centre of refuge but today seeks refuge from rampant disappearance due to maintenance failure.
Continuing from this are blocks of cast concrete which hold impressions of iron pillars, windows, and floral iron railings in a series called Diminishing elements which draws attention to the disappearing grandeur of the houses. And the exhibition concludes with the titular work ‘The cage broke, and I found the horizon’, a piece-by-piece assembled work which tries to replicate the structures of a traditional Bengali home courtyard, letting one freely walk amidst it, giving the feel of not only art and creativity but also making one recall a lost part of childhood, for many.
Catch the full exhibition tour on Indulge Express Youtube Channel
The exhibition is on till June 14.
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