Payal Chakraborty London, United Kingdom

• 
• 

  Back to profiles Invite to apply

Working in the areas of visual art, culture, and curation, the mediums of my artistic expression are drawing, painting, mixed-media works with scrap, blog writing, ceramic sculptures, curation, photography, and short documentaries. Autobiographical context as the dominant subject in my early practice, my practice now emerges from within the situations of contemporary times.

Sustainability is core to my art practice, as a conceptual artist I explore the nature of ‘Art’ and its relation to the ‘Environment’. Subjecting the issue of scrap and landfills became the core of my Graduation show at London Met. The series ‘Wall of Curios’ have been published as a case study by Esperimenti Architettonici, Italy 2022. The work subjects the mass-produced non-utilitarian scrap as invisible building blocks, co-existing in dissonance with human existence, is the reflection of our society.

Working as a community appraiser at Toynbee Hall for the conservation of the Petticoat Lane project in 2022, I got an opportunity to propose a project, ‘Dhakai Jamdani the Pride’. Funded by Historic England, it culminated in a multidisciplinary curated exhibition with the short documentary 'Magical Motifs’ on 30 August 2023.

As a cultural practitioner, my trip to Bangladesh for the project encouraged me to take a short trip to India’s culturally rich states of Odisha and West Bengal to explore the traditional art of Talapatra painting and Sholapith Art. Their hands-on approach with nature as material and inspiration for expression, ways of storytelling, and the sustainability aspect drew my attention. Constantly evolving practice through medium and scale, my current research-based practice is about connecting to the cultural roots yet creating a universal language. Awarded with the Arts Council DYCP Funding and A-N Artists Bursary, I will apply the newly learnt art in exploring that how it is been living in the times of uncertainty.