Program around the Exhibition – Extraordinary Line

In 2011, Sambaran Das was employed as an illustrator at the Bengal Post, an English news daily in Kolkata.  He carried a large, bleached sketchbookto the office and used to fill it up with drawings during free time. He drew with a fervour of urgency his impressions of the city, office, neighbourhood, visions and nightmares that daily brewed inside him.  He inked through the pages as the shadows of the riverine city revealed themselves.  Agnibho Gangopadhyay, a friend and colleague at the office, took more than a passing interest in his daily outpourings and proposed to write alongside Das’s images. Agnibho, now a teacher of history, shares a similar passion for the occult lights of the decadent metropolis of Kolkata.  Their collaboration resulted in a little more than 160 pages of images and text synchronising around 2011-2013. The book was titled The Flaneur File. The exercise was a post-Y2K product. It captured the flux of an era, its decadence and the predicament of the ‘now’. Sambaran will be speaking at length about his engagement with the city, its ever-changing façade, and its darker alleyways. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sambaran Das is a practising artist and designer based in Kolkata. He regularly participates in public art initiatives and performances in the city. Das has also worked as a theatre set designer and as a freelance graphic artist in media and publication houses. Presently, Das is focusing on depicting contemporary Kolkata. His portrayal of the various personalities that make up the chaos of the city takes on a new relevance through his stark monochromatic palette.