Galerie Fons Welters - Amsterdam

SOME RUINS ARE EXTANT……. Transient city and rooted one

Arjun Das, like many others from his village, moved to Kolkata with his brothers at the age of 10 to work in a restaurant. He later enrolled at Rabindra Bharati University, where he completed a BFA and MFA in Sculpture in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Das’ extensive experience as a migrant worker has profoundly influenced his artistic practice. It enabled him to depict the realities of working-class life through his art. Arjun incorporates found and recycled materials into his practice, skillfully applying his carving techniques to transform reclaimed wood into intricate relief works.

During his recent residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Das continued to anchor his work in the experiences of local working-class communities, actively exploring construction sites throughout the city. Maastricht bears the debt of its own excavations and those who carried them out. Two thousand years ago the Romans excavated Limburg to marl the land and forge building bricks. In the thirteenth century, the region’s limestone was used to build the city’s walls and churches. By the 1920s, ENCI (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie), located on Mount Saint Peter, had become the biggest cement works in Europe. As ever more ground was unearthed, so too were fossils.

Though ENCI’s mining practices ended in 2018, several former employees entrusted Das with original bricks from Maastricht’s historic wall as well as more recent ones being used to repair it. Employing archival techniques inspired by archaeological excavation methods, he carves new “fossils” into these recovered fragments. Titled SOME RUINS ARE EXTANT……. Transient city and rooted one, they depict instruments of the city’s unheralded workers.

Across recovered limestone, found wood, and drawings, Das creates an iconography of the laboring class. The imagery contrasts with depictions of bourgeois power and comfort that frequently appear within the same works. Carving into limestone and wood, he reveals deeply stratified layers of society: mirrored worlds of rich and poor. If Das’ fossils are an attempt to fill the lacunae of the region’s historical record, his wood carvings and drawings introduce a visual vocabulary of the working class in the present.[1]

Arjun Das (b. 1994) lives and works in Kolkata, India. He has had solo exhibition including ‘Land of the Leal’ (2023) Dhi Artspace Hyderabad, IN, and ‘Traces’ (2019) Museum Forum Schlossplatz, CH. Previous group shows include ‘In the Vacuum We Felt Air’ at Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, NL, ‘An Unlocated Window of Myself’ (2023) at Dotwalk Gallery, Delhi, IN, ‘PERSPECTA 17’ (2017) at Gallery 88, Kolkata, IN and ‘Persistence of Memory’ (2019) at Art Positive Gallery, New Delhi, IN.

[1] Jan van Eyck Academie. Publication issued on the occasion of Open Studios, 20–23 June 2024. Texts by Jan van Eyck participants in collaboration with Amanda Sarroff. Translations by Thea Wieteler. Edited by Solange Roosen and Liva Laure.

Enquiry