Prajjwal Choudhury

Prajjwal Choudhury graduated with a BVA in Painting from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in 2003 and went on to complete his MVA in Printmaking from MSU Baroda in 2006. He is at war with the way in which everyday objects are taken for granted. He gathers his preliminary fuel from such objects like matchboxes to engineer his thought-provoking creations. These matchboxes carry a realistic visual appeal, but with a wry humour, deceiving the onlooker. The cover of the matchboxes carries images of the works of the world-famous artists-Andy Warhol, Picasso, Damien Hirst, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, Dhruva Mistry, Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta and Atul Dodiya. Each day one comes across the word recycle right from one’s desktop to the bottles and writing pads. The fear of suffocating the world to death continuously plagues our life and we think of recycling. For Prajjwal, the very technicalsign of recycling becomes symbolic and he attempts to relate it to be a cultural phenomenon, the cyclic order becoming very engaging. This cyclic order has multiple reference points and it draws illusions to the social circle. The making of an image, creation of a persona, maybe of an actor or an artist, a politician and even us belong to this rotating order of things. There are reproductions of these images in various media as well as for different purposes. It is interesting to observe how even a persona is taken for a commodity and circulated and recirculated in our social environment. The forms may change, the purpose may differ but the circle continues through production and reproduction by the social mechanism.

In his earlier works he has dwelled deeper into the inquiry of consumerist human greed. The sculpture “Commemoration” – (memorial pole erected in celebration of “death”) requires to be seen with the given citation to each image. Each figure, made in wood, porcelain cast and artificial denture, sits astride on top of the other. The lower most figurine represents the Goddess Mother of the World/Earth from the protohistoric period, is a personification of
nature, motherhood, fertility, creation and destruction. “A smile,” inspired from Laughing Buddha, “doesn’t necessarily mean happiness; it could be something else.” or the illusion of happiness. Human gratification for sumptuousness is leading nature/life/earth to the verge of annihilation. And the other figure sitting on a pedestal brings wealth, good luck and Prosperity. On top of it is an iconography from the Hindu pantheon of “Aditi Uttanpada/Lajja
Gauri” –the squatting female figure with exposed genitals in the position of giving birth, while the figure atop this draws direct inspiration from Chinese artist Yue Minjun’s imagery of a man with smile on his face.

He graduated with a BVA in Painting from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in 2003 and went on to complete his MVA in Printmaking from MSU Baroda in 2006. He continued his relationship with the institution by acting as a Visiting Lecturer with the Faculty of Fine Arts from 2011-2012. He lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat, India. His honors and achievements include the HK Kejriwal Young Artist Award (2012); Seoksu Art Project – Asia Arts Link organized by SAP (2011); Merging Asian Artist Award, Art Gwangju, South Korea (2010); and ‘Asia Pacific Artists Fellowship’ with a six month residency in National Art Studio, Goyang, National Museum of South Korea (2010). Selected group exhibitions and fairs include Square is just a Shape, Art Cinnamon, Hong Kong (2013); 5th India Art Fair, LATITUDE 28 booth, New Delhi (2013); Slipping through the Cracks, curated by Meera Menezes at LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (2012); 4th India Art Fair, LATITUDE 28 booth, New Delhi (2012); Art:Gwangju:12 at LATITUDE 28 booth (2012); Style File – 11 & 12, Kolkata and New Delhi (2011 and 2012); Continuum: Encapsulating Contemporary Indian Art by LATITUDE 28 and Art Cinnamon, Singapore, (2011); The Annual Show: Two Years of LATITUDE 28, LATITUDE 28, New Delhi (2012); Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle curated by Bhavna Kakar, Bose Pacia, Kolkata (2009); 2nd India Art Summit, Latitude 28 and Project88 booth, New Delhi (2009); Re-claim/Re-cite/Re-cycle presented by Seven Art and LATITUDE 28, Travancore House, New Delhi (2009); 3rd India Art Summit, LATITUDE 28 booth, New Delhi (2011); Delhi Contemporary Art Week at LATITUDE 28 booth, New Delhi (2019); India Art Fair at LATITUDE 28 booth, New Delhi (2019); Other Anecdotes, curated by Ruchika’s Art Gallery and Niyatee Shinde, Space@SCION, Los Angeles (2011); Notes on
(Dis)appearance of the Real, curated by M. Vari & A. Lodaya, Stainless Steel Art Gallery, New Delhi (2010); Digifesta, Speed of Earth – Media Art Festival, Gwangju Biennial Hall, South Korea (2010) and ‘India Awakens, Under the Banyan Tree’, curated by Dr. Alka Pande, Essl Museum, Vienna (2010). His solo exhibition took place at Project 88, Mumbai, 2008.