Solo Presentation: CAN YOU DIVIDE THE SKY?
Chakraborty's art installation, presented at VOLTA Art Fair Basel, conveys a poetic portrait of our coexistence and reflects on migration and identity.
Excerpt from the press release:
Chakraborty’s art installation CAN YOU DIVIDE THE SKY? comprises sculptures, drawings and poems. It explores stories of identity and puts forward questions around our coexistence, borders and migration. The works will be connected in material and textual practices, and a multitude of clay mushrooms will sprout throughout the installation. The sculptural installation is the result of multiple participatory workshops in which refugees, migrants, and locals shared their stories and engaged in crafting mushrooms as an enriched community experience. The hue of the mushrooms alludes to the skin color of the hands that sculpted them. Chakraborty says: "Mushrooms migrate. They grow wherever they find nutrients. And so, I started depicting people as these little mushrooms. Just like in a natural ecosystem, we are also connected by our stories and experiences."
Chakraborty was inspired by Anna Tsing's book "The Mushroom at the End of the World ". An exploratory essay on capitalism based on one of the most valuable edible mushroom in the world — the Matsutake mushroom. The author also describes how people migrate across the globe in mutual dependence alongside plants in search of nutrients, whether in the form of carbohydrates or love.
In CAN YOU DIVIDE THE SKY? visitors are invited to walk through the space observing their own perception and sensations fused together with the textual source of the installation. Chakraborty’s solo presentation provides a poetic outline of alternate forms of identities, creating and thinking. It establishes a perceptual field of hope for a more egalitarian global future.
Sculptural Installation: EUROPA
Works on Paper
Lyrics of An Unmade Song
Resistance