By Vikram Bachhawat
As part of the ongoing 20th Anniversary Celebrations of Aakriti Art Gallery, the gallery—alongside the Bachhawat Foundation—launched its inaugural artist residency programme in October 2025, marking the beginning of a year-long sequence of curated exhibitions, scholarly publications, and critical art initiatives that will continue through September 2026.

One of the key moments during this first residency was a dedicated presentation session, where the ten participating artists—Kapil Jangid, Arpan Sadhukhan, Prithwish Daw, David Malakar, Souvik Das, Raka Panda, Prajith Elampillai, Pratap Manna, Mitali Das, and Shitangshu Mondal—shared their artistic journeys and in-progress explorations through individual slide presentations. The session served as both an introduction to their visual language and an invitation for dialogue.

Anchored by critical mentorship from senior artists and educators Prof. Indrapramit Roy (Faculty, M.S. University of Baroda) and Prof. Chhatrapati Dutta ( Principal, Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata), the presentations unfolded as a rigorous exercise in peer-to-peer engagement. Both mentors offered thoughtful responses, posing questions that challenged conceptual clarity and encouraged contextual depth. The conversation spanned formal aesthetics, material practice, cultural memory, and the politics of representation—placing individual expression within broader frames of art history and contemporary discourse.

More than a display of works-in-progress, the session embodied the residency’s ethos: to create a reflective, dialogic space that nurtures experimentation while remaining attentive to critical thinking and collaborative learning. In many ways, it exemplified Aakriti Art Gallery’s long-standing commitment to fostering new talent through structured platforms of mentorship and support.

The residency programme—held at the Foundation’s rural campus on the outskirts of Kolkata—represents the first in a series of intensive engagements planned throughout Aakriti’s twentieth anniversary year. With upcoming exhibitions, group shows curated by leading scholars, book launches, and artist-led projects on the horizon, the celebration promises a vibrant confluence of past legacy and future vision.

Keep an eye on this space as we continue to celebrate two decades of collecting, curating, and cultivating the future of Indian art.