Palettes Art Gallery: ‘Aitijhya’, Narayan Chandra Biswas’s solo exhibition, at Bikaner House, Delhi. The most abstract reference, exploring the interstices between cultural memory, personal identity, and generational trauma, leading to thoughtful visual contemplation.
In an age of fragmented selfhoods, the connection between culture and architecture is more relevant than ever. Over the ages and across cultures, architecture has inscribed the values and anxieties and aspirations of society onto a canvas. From cathedrals that soar toward divine authority to the geometric rigour of colonial bungalows that invoked power and separation, architecture has much to say about the political, spiritual and social order of an era. And even in the humblest of buildings, such as courtyards or shared thresholds, one can find the subtle details through which a region’s communal life, and the ways its inhabitants relate to one another, become visible.
A Living Map of Legacy
With Aitijhya, Narayan Chandra Biswas explores this school of thought — architecture being an ever-evolving map of legacy — through a lens of personal experience. Balding from the heritage of his father, a mechanical engineer who became a carpenter, Biswas’s project conjures the individual memory to align with the communal past. His father sowed in him an instinctual, intimate relationship with materials — metal, in particular, a medium Biswas handles with unpretentious mastery. That bond emerges in the monumental sculptures that populate the exhibition, in which Biswas critically examines forms from India’s architectural vernacular through the prism of personal memory, family and the greater cultural history of the land.
With origins based in post-partition migration, Biswas was born in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, and the arc of her life as an artist is tailored toward notions of place and how it informs a sense of displacement. Switching from drawing and painting to sculpture enabled him to begin exploring metalwork while attending Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Metal, a material often thought of as permanent, is reframed by Biswas as malleable, capable of holding memory as much as change. His use of this material is also a nod to the centuries-old, deep tradition of metal craft in Bastar, where the Dhokra technique of non-ferrous metal casting has been known for generations, often to tell stories and as a means of preserving ancestral knowledge.
Rethought ‘Indian’ Architecture and Memory
The title of the exhibition comes from the Bangla word Aitijhya, the translation of which can clinch it all, heritage or oral tradition, signifying the legacy passed from one generation to the next. The skyscraper, in Biswas’s hands, becomes more than a commentary on India’s rich architectural traditions. Through the creation of monumental, large-scale sculptures that recall the Pols, or tightly-packed housing clusters in western India that accommodate many diverse communities, Biswas builds monuments that are not mere representations of physical structures, but of the socio-emotional fabric that lies at their foundations.
The sculptures combine symbols from India’s complex religious and social identity — wooden crucifixes, crescent moons — embedded, almost invisibly, in imaginary facades. This combination of symbols from different traditions shows the richness of India’s cultural heritage. But there is an unsettling ambivalence to these sculptures — they feel like they bring together disparate parts, but also raise questions about the very divisions they’re meant to overcome. Are these architectural forms unifying us, or are they highlighting the fractures and fissures—that remain?
In a particularly moving moment, the exhibition rips from a poem by Nida Fazli, Walid Ki Wafat Par, “The one who carved your name on your grave — he is a liar. I am the one who is buried in your grave. You live on within me.” You are made of other people, and at the same time, you are not — there are lines to be drawn and borders to be crossed between past and present, thought and feeling; the characters in our histories, in our legacies, in our loved ones live on inside us even after they disappear. In Biswas’s work, this idea resonates strongly through the structures he constructs, structures that contain within them the presence of his father, his lineage, and a larger cultural heritage that won’t let itself wither away.
Craft+Culture | The Intersection of Craft and Culture
At its heart, Aitijhya is a study of legacy, not just national or cultural, but profoundly personal. Biswas’s work dwells in architecture as a trope for memory, loss and continuity. It acts as a medium through which we grieve the past but celebrate the unshakeable legacy that our ancestors left behind. Whether it’s through the materials he uses, the forms he makes, or the symbolism he builds into his sculptures, Biswas encourages viewers to reflect on how the physical edifices we erect, be they homes or monuments, embody narratives of our lives and the legacies we create.
The exhibition does an admirable job asking us to consider the way our cultural inheritance is shaped as much by the grand arc of history as the intimate, familial relationships that exist within the human experience. More than a peculiar sport, Biswas’s work leaves fingerprints of memory, both personal and collective, asking how things, in their various iterations — architecture, built or imagined — are a medium through which we touch history.
Aitijhya by Narayan Chandra Biswas presents a layered, meditative exploration into the complex interplay between personal history and collective cultural identity. By presenting architecture not merely as a physical edifice, but rather as an organic artefact that lives and breathes the legacies that define us all, this exhibition sparks an invitation for viewers to engage with that tradition and those histories.
Exhibition Dates: April 12 – 21, Bikaner House, Delhi, April 24 – May 31, Palette Art Gallery, Delhi
Image Courtesy of the artist
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