Biplab Sarkar
India
The seventh recipient of the Glenfiddich/Bestcollegeart Emerging Indian Artist of the year Award Biplab’s miniaturistic narrative body of work explores the relationship of body and object in an urban context largely dealing with the lifestyle and struggles of hawkers working at heritage sites, tourist places, local market or the independent wanderers. He has been working and researching on this idea from past three years which evolved through the conversation with the hawkers, photographic documentation, audio recordings, sketching and the mere observation of their life style.
The simplistic forms painted with subtle tones of water colours with some line drawings are evolved from the photographic reference. The process of working also includes communication with these hawkers regarding their life style and daily job. This conversation includes simple questions like; where do they live? What time they arrive? What time they leave? How long it has been for them working in this field? These encounters resurface in his drawings and paintings and sometimes sound also plays a crucial role during display. Biplab considers his art practice to be somewhere very similar or parallel to the art practice followed back in the 19th century’s Company School Paintings and he seeks to revive those traditions and document the same in contemporary scenario.
