ELSEWHERE in Northeast India

Aug 12, 2024 - Aug 20, 2024

LATITUDE 28 is delighted to present ‘ELSEWERE- In Northeast India, a solo exhibition by Chandan Bez Baruah, curated by Waswo X. Waswo at Shridharani Art Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam.

Chandan Bez Baruah’s woodcuts evidence more than his skill at detailed realism. This body of works presents an unexpected visage due to its processual complexity, involving a double transfer of medium – wherein, the artist’s world of inspiration is captured digitally to be then arduously transformed into woodcut prints.

If Chandan’s efforts were to be narrativised, it would perhaps reveal a part of the grand narrative of secession and dispossession that has resulted in the ambiguity of locational identity for many people of the northeastern states of India. These works are informed by this double context of both personal and situational changes. The trauma of having lost his mother in early childhood has haunted Chandan and ever since the shifting of location by the family and for his own creative pursuits further distanced him from the reassuring green ambience of home and led to an increased sense of loss and isolation.

CURATORIAL NOTE

Chandan Bez Baruah

A Fence in the Forest

“The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” – Claude Monet

In January of 2021 the exhibition ‘If There Be No Ears’ opened at LATITUDE 28. The title was a play upon the quasi-philosophical notion that if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear, there is no sound. In other words, sound requires a witness. Without a witness, a tree falls in lonely, soundless, solitude. This is of course scientifically untrue, but socially and politically there is a sobering truth to it. In the first exhibition that I curated for Chandan, I felt the need to defend what many might find as beautifully intricate landscapes, made via the very demanding medium of woodcut, but possible to dismiss as merely nostalgic and romantic. “Pictorialist vocabularies hold a graphic beauty of their own.” I wrote, “Devoid of human figuration or wildlife, Chandan unashamedly subscribes to the notion of the solitary observer”, or, in other words, Chandan appoints himself as the witness: the ears that will verify that the trees are falling, and that yet again the sounds of destruction have echoed through the hills.

With this new body of work and this new exhibition, Chandan wants to speak to us through his eyes rather than his ears. His wondrously elaborate renditions of Northeast landscapes are still a main subject, but intrusions have crept in: shacks, bulldozers, unfinished construction, trucks collecting garbage, and chain-link fences. People, too, make a first appearance in Chandan’s oeuvre; representatives of the marginalized. This is not only an expansion of the subject matter, but also the maturing of an artist, whose draughtsmanship, technical skills, and hard work were never in question. Now, his visualizations powerfully lay claim to a more deeply aware social and aesthetic ground.

Chandan is still the witness, but his beloved forests are changing, and he expresses this. “The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. We all enjoy the wilderness and the joys of nature, but we also must suffer the eyesores brought upon by hasty and thoughtless development. Anyone who has driven through the countryside knows this, but Chandan expresses it with aplomb. We can contrast Emerson’s statement with that of Claude Monet, “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” Oh, but is it? Gardens always imply ownership, privacy, protective fences, and a need for permission to enter. Gardens are beautiful, and we love them, yet they cannot only shelter us from the city, but they can also distance us from nature. This dichotomy of the man-made would-be paradise and the natural world is the subtext of these works.

Chandan’s works still seduce us with the sublime, but he has now both opened his ears and expanded his eyes. He has also opened his talents and refined them. There is beauty here and also ugliness, made present via exquisitely crafted woodcuts. Are they in harmony with one another? Chandan Bez Baruah asks us to consider this deeply and find the truth within.

Waswo X. Waswo

Curator