Soumava Das

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Productions, envisions creating an artist’s book/glossary through onsite engagements, developing small devices such as the Lorrain Glass and Thaumatrope accompanied by short videos, and producing a temporary landscape archive. The project inquires into the spaces of transitions, reuses, overlaps, impositions and superimpositions, anchoring the ghats (riverbanks) between the Rabindra Setu and the Vidyasagar Setu along the Hooghly River in Kolkata.  Focussing on the temporary spaces that are part of the urban fabric and improvement-narratives, it seeks to trace, contest, and retrace the points that have been fronted by the planning archives through a critical lens. Soumava Das is the Coordinator for this project. 

Soumava Das is an artist, researcher and curator based in Kolkata, India. He has an MFA in painting from Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, 2022. He received the FICA Emerging Artist Award (EAA+) 2024. He has curated and co-facilitated several workshops, some of which are – a pedagogical workshop for school students, at the invitation of DAG Museums, which developed into an exhibition Past in Print: India’s Freedom Struggle, 2025 and a two-day workshop, Drawing from Life with the students of JJ School of Art, Architecture and Design, at the invitation of DAG Museums, 2025. Given his expertise he is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. 

For this project, Soumava will engage with the temporary, liminal spaces which he terms as the meanwhile spaces along the ghats between the Rabindra Setu and the Vidyasagar Setu along the Hooghly River. Interrogating the urban-planning logics, Soumava interprets that this kind of planning fails to incorporate the people who migrate from elsewhere trying to find better work and living opportunities in the cities, and end up in liminal spaces of (‘huts’, ‘jhuggi’, ‘jhupri’). The urban-planning logic sees these temporary spaces as encroachments, occupations and as disruptions to the improvement, safety, cleanliness, and beautification of the city. It fails to encourage co-existence. Soumava will connect with the people living and working from such spaces along the ghats. For the past seventy years these people have been reusing the spaces of the ghats and working as flower-artists from makeshift architectures, and they face regular removal and displacement. Soumava’s engagement will encourage us to remember the meanwhile and vernacular spaces as part of the landscape discourse. 

Soumava will work with flower-artists, shopkeepers along the ghats and create temporary structures that are both work and living spaces for these people, and which often fall prey to anti-encroachment drives. This act will be a commentary on the failure of the city to accommodate its people on the margins. He will access archives to research city-planning documents and about vernacular structures, while creating small devices such as Lorrain Glass and Thaumatrope, to produce imaginary, transitory, and superimposed landscapes, which gives a sense of spaces that never existed. These devices will be accompanied with small videos. Finally, the project will culminate into an artist book or a glossary about the processes of the project along with documentation materials and a temporary landscape exhibition, or a temporary archive as Soumava calls it. 

The outcome of this project will be to create landscape imaginaries inclusive of the temporary and vernacular spaces as part of the urban discourse by engaging with the sites along the ghats and the archives. It also aims to produce an inclusive space as a temporary archive along the ghats. The Project Coordinator's deliverables to IFA along with the final report will be an artist’s book/glossary, the small devices accompanied by short videos, documentation materials from the process and the temporary landscape archive. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice Programme in the manner in which it intends to engage with a community of people who are excluded from the fabric of urban imagination and to bring focus to their work, temporary living structures, and their contribution to the economy.  

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees. 

This project is supported by Tata Trusts.