Arnab Gan Choudhury, MFA 2024

Attended PAFA 2022–2024

ganchoudhryar@pobox.pafa.edu

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Statement

The idea of ‘home’ is the central exploration in my artistic practice. Being born and brought up in Kolkata, India and moving to the United States, ‘home’ has always been a nuanced concept for me, one that is no longer a geographical location but instead a place rooted in nostalgia, existing only in memories.

 

As a kid, growing up in Kolkata, I was restless and full of ambition, travelling around the city with every chance I got to sneak out of home. It was unadulterated freedom, a childish sense of adventure - a feeling that I was forced to grow out of once I moved to my new environment. My works explore the idea of the nostalgic home and reinvents the childish sense of adventure through drawings, sculptures and installations. I actively draw from imagery that I was exposed to while growing up in Kolkata such as signs and symbols on public transport, blueprints and elaborate diagrams in school textbooks, things that I would see in cartoons that I spent my childhood evenings watching.