My intimacy with the sights, sounds and scents of everyday experiences forms the essence of my work. It encompasses all things natural and social; humane and animalistic; animate and inanimate. Being born into a middle-class Bengali family, I am constantly negotiating my dissent against the socio-cultural norms within which I am defined. This paradox is a recurring element in my ways of seeing.
Situated in the far north of Kolkata, my locality, once a typical Bengali 'para', has evolved into a gold smitten factory area, where 'bhadrolok' households now co-exist with shops, 'karkhana's, and living spaces for the manual laborers who work there.As a young, unmarried female neighbor I am an audience to the polished gossips of the community of housewives and 'aunties'. I can also catch glimpses of that parallel world where the labourer boys and men voice their dreams, desires and coarse gossips.This has had a partly exasperating and partly enlightening impact on my work.
I use found objects, photographs, collected items, texts and a variety of materials in my artworks by juxtaposing their values and utilities and trying to create new attire for them in art. The places, roads, and buildings I have visited; my experiences of love, hate, betrayal in relationships; my changes of perception and my personal history weave in and out as metaphors in my work.
The knowledge about society that I collect from different mediums and my own insights into the psychology of people around me often clashes with my beliefs and values. This creates an in-between space which indulges my work of art.