NILANJAN DAS

Nilanjan Das (b. 1988) is an artist and printmaker born in West Bengal, India. Das completed his BFA, MFA, and Ph.D. in Printmaking from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. He is presently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Printmaking at Utkal University of Culture, Bhubaneswar. He is a trustee and artist of the Hamdasti Artist Collective, Kolkata.

Das’s research explores the critical relationship between public and private spaces in terms of intimacy, social relationship, and the ways in which these interactions negotiate power dynamics. Therefore, he often examines public spaces across geographic locations and the various components they are composed of, such as social or legal rules, value systems, norms, functionalities, physical structure, and even the history of a place. Values, norms, or rules are, according to Henry Lefebvre, a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, one of the crucial components of the complex structure called social space. Who determines values and norms or sets up the rules? Lefebvre held capitalism accountable for governing the social space, even everyday life, by exploiting or bringing in value systems. Indian reality is far removed and complex from the West. Here, capitalist forces, in accordance with traditions, customs, forms of inequality, political institutions, the state, and religion, determine the value system that affects the formation of social space. Public space is a place to examine those values and social/legal norms that shape and control everyday public life.

His recent research explores the role of urban design in the formation of public and social spaces, and how intimacy takes place and faces challenges in these arenas.

Nilanjan has received awards and participated in artist residencies and exhibitions in India and abroad. Worthy of mention are Artist in Residency, Singapore Art Museum, 2023; World Within World Without II, presented by Art Incept, Co-curated by Prima Kurien and Rahul Kumar, IF BE, Ballard Estate, Mumbai, 2023. Inception Grant, Art Incept, New Delhi 2023; Simulacrum curated by Arushi Vats, presented by Anant Art at Bikaner House, New Delhi, 2022; the Manorama Young Printmaker Award 2021 from India Printmaker House; Pulp Society Artist in Residency, First Edition, Delhi, 2020; the Sponsored Coursework Program Award at Give Me Space, New Prints 2020 at International Print Center, New York; Social Art Practice support, from Khoj International Artist Association, New Delhi for their project Peripheries & Crossovers: art as social practice, 2019; Artist Residency Award, Megalo Print Studio & Gallery, Canberra, Australia, 2018; Next-Step Artist in Residency program at 1 Shanthiroad Studio and Gallery, Bangalore, supported by the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation, 2018; National Award in 29th National Exhibition of Contemporary Art organized by SCZCC, Nagpur (Ministry of Culture, Government of India) 2016; Annual Printmaking Award by Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, 2014.

He also works as a curatorial assistant for the project Living a Dark Night curated by Dr. Paula Sengupta; Exhibition Design and Artist at Project Sensory Heritage Kolkata, funded and supported by UCL, Center for Critical Heritage Studies & Durham University Geography Research Development Initiative, 2022

Das also taught printmaking at Department of Graphics – Printmaking, Rabindra Bharti University, Kolkata as a guest teacher (2022-2023) and at the Department of B.Ed., Bijoy Krishna Girls College, Howrah, West Bengal (2020-2023).