28th – 29th September 2019 | The Distillery, Museum Square, Alembic City, Alembic Road, Vadodara.
“Every Year the Flood Comes” is an exhibition of new works by Baroda-based artist Sudipta Das. Referring both to the physical and emotional losses caused by seasonal floods that devastate the artist’s home town of Silchar, Assam, Every year the flood comes considers the precarious position of human lives in flux. Through collections and assemblages of her now-iconic doll-like paper sculptures, Das dives into personal history and family narratives to explore themes of exile, refuge and temporariness of life. Meticulously crafted from layers and layers of handmade Hanji paper, her chosen medium is fragile, yet resistant.
For Every Year the Flood Comes, Das creates a new installation which forces viewers to navigate between the sea of nameless figures. The arrangement reinforces the idea of mass populations who have to cross over impermanent thresholds into uncertain futures, while the act of the viewer passing through reminds us of our complicity as silent bystanders to these incidents of forced mass exile.
