KOLKATA: Bhabatosh Sutar (49), celebrated for his Durga idols in the city and beyond, hosted his first solo exhibition ‘Celebration’ — primarily installations and busts — as a memorial to the pandemic. The exhibition that got over on Sunday was held at Chander Haat conceived by veteran painter Tarun De — spread over 46 cottahs of land — in Behala’s Sorshuna.
The installations included the walk of migrant workers, impact of intolerance on history and art, pandemic-induced load on a class of people and a memory project of Sutar’s personal experiences of living in a Phalta orphanage for four years.
From his desk at the office room, 64 busts stand in a 400 ft-long procession, first breaking the boundary walls of all Chander Haat buildings, then crossing the road and barging inside two neighbours’ houses. At another studio, there are 20 semi-nude photographs of his performance.
Art aficionados agree that Sutar’s exhibition is unique. “This show is markedly different from the ones we see regularly at Kolkata’s galleries. Bhabo had booked all six galleries of the Academy of Fine Arts for this show in 2019. But no Kolkata gallery was ready to allow all their walls to be broken down. Bhabo has shown courage to break walls to put up this show,” said veteran artist Hiran Mitra.
“What I found riveting was the row of heads that he has called ‘manusher michhil’. They begin from his office and wander right into the fields. This has helped him bring Chander Haat people right into his exhibition. With Chander Haat and Bhabatosh, this show has taken on a different intimacy and intensity,” said art historian Tapati Guha Thakurta.
During lockdown, Sutar started writing ‘Art on Ground Zero’. In the process he interacted with neighbours, including a vegetable vendor, rickshaw puller and a KMC worker. One day, while talking to his school mate, a plumber, Sutar noticed, “When he spoke, his exhausted face seemed like a terracotta bust under a yellow bulb. I realized there are so many neighbours whose stories we never listen to. I recorded stories of 64 people and made their terracotta portraits. Initially, each bust took four days to complete. Later I became so invested that it took just three to four hours to make one.”
