About the Artist

Suman Chandra

Suman Chandra (b. 1993) describes his practice as existing among the roles of the artist-observer, the archivist, and the storyteller. His work began with the series 'Transformation', resulting from observing his father’s 40 year-long small business as a coal retailer, then moving to large-scale landscape paintings that speak to a dark human-made environment. From his conversations with miners, he throws light on their disenfranchisement. Over the past few years, he undertook extensive research on coal mines in Jharkhand and West Bengal. Chandra studies the materiality of coal through his sculptures, built alongside an ongoing archive of images, journals, notebooks, conversations, and videos. Chandra’s engagement with works of artists such as William Kentridge and Prabhakar Pachpute places him as a new voice in a lineage of artists who throw light on issues of social injustice.