Artists

Srikanta Paul

Srikanta Paul, born in 1971, studied painting at Rabindra Bharati University and printmaking at MS University, Baroda, graduating in 2001. He lives and works in Kolkata.

This woodcut by Srikanta Paul speaks of our political existence, linking politics not so much to an ideology as to the very corporeality and viscerality of the body itself, the intense psychic and sensory expressions of which it captures at the level of both image and narrative, as well as image-making. Drawing on various sources, from religious iconographies and myth to popular, his work highlights the confusion and incongruity that constitutes our political being, allowing and stopping us to take actions. The centrality of the body that connects his prints to the work of great political artists like Kathe Kollwitz, Chittaprasad or Somnath Hore also connects, of course in a subtle way, to the obscure cults of Baul in Bengal, which he is deeply interested in.