Of identity & memory in Arpita Akhanda’s works

Arpita Akhanda may be just 32 years old but seems to have already lived multiple lives through her art — as her own grandmother before and after Partition, as a listener to strangers whispering stories of loss, and as a storyteller of displaced people coming to grips with their identity. Using paints and paper, videos, performances and installations, Arpita communicates multifarious histories and emotions in contemporary frameworks: a modern artist linking the past and present, urging us to pause before the chaotic future arrives.

Arpita was recently awarded the coveted Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2025, given by the Hong Kong-based Sovereign Art Foundation that promotes contemporary Asian art. Arpita’s woven artwork, ‘Dendritic Data lb’, chosen from among works of 35 shortlisted Asian artists, was described as a “visual meditation on identity and memory”. She was inspired by the rock patterns in Hampi, Karnataka, while completing her residency there. Hampi’s landscape, ancient Indian iconography and Arpita’s personal store of memories all converged into this artwork.

“This piece is rooted in the Dendritic patterns I found on the granite mines in Hampi, reflecting the natural contours and identity of the region,” says Arpita. In the figure’s embrace is a heavy boulder, symbolising the weight of memory and the burden of history we all carry. ‘Dendritic Data Ib’ is a visual take on identity, memory, and “how we are shaped by the land, history, and forces beyond our control.”

Her art expresses the trauma of Partition that ordinary people experienced and the loss and despair young and old suffer in war and disaster. These are stories of human civilisation that official documents and historians rarely record. These stories, she believes, need to be told. Arpita describes herself as a memory keeper, a collector of myriad experiences locked in family archives of photographs, postcards, poems, telegrams, oral histories and narratives.

Many who experienced traumas like Partition have either died or are too fragile to narrate such experiences. “Guiding them back to these memories can be emotionally difficult, yet their voices are vital,” she says. Family archives can be incomplete. To bridge this gap, she employs visual elements like pixelation, symbolising the fragmented nature of these narratives.

Born in Cuttack, Odisha, Arpita went to Santiniketan in West Bengal to study art and settled there. Currently in residency at Kyoto, Japan, she has performed and showcased in several countries. In India, the Emami Art Gallery, Kolkata, represents her works.

One of Arpita’s significant works is ‘Ami Utvastu Noi I and II’ (‘I am Not a Refugee’). Paper woven with archival print, the portraits appear smudged with data, patterns and words. These images are framed in patterns that appear like traditional mats used in parts of rural India. Dressed like her grandmother, Arpita stood next to a barbed wire to photograph for this work.

River Padma in Bangladesh, which her grandmother crossed, is woven into the artwork. The title poses a fundamental question: unlike refugees who move from one country to another, her grandmother and her family were forced to move within one country that was split into two. Her art asserts a new definition of the term ‘refugee’. It also speaks loudly against the violence that political developments unleash.

She presents her body as “a vessel” that stores the stamp of the past, but is also “a site of post-memorial reconstruction”. In another work (a video), ‘Transitory Body’, Arpita records an interactive performance while conducting a dialogue with trees, land, people and their memories. Like the trees, Arpita has been replanted, along with her family history. She covers her body with dates — relevant to her family and the country she now lives in. Each date resonates with the action of officials who stamp passports, ration cards, medical records. People stamp multiple dates on her arms and legs. These remind them of what they went through, as refugees, victims of violence and people lost in new lands. They whisper in Arpita’s ears the reasons for stamping these dates. Arpita whispers her memories into their ears. Memories migrate, personal becomes collective history here.

Aesthetically, Arpita’s works are both stunning and edgy. Richa Agarwal, CEO, Emami Art, says the award suggests the “boundless possibilities that await artists dedicated to pushing artistic and conceptual boundaries”. For Arpita, delving deeper into the impermanence of memory is a future possibility — “exploring who we become when we no longer remember ourselves, yet traces of who we once were continue to linger in our surroundings”.

— The writer is a Delhi-based contributor