COLLECTIONS
COLLECTIONS
INTALLATIONS
ABOUT
ABOUT
My life in London has roots that snake across continents and cultures. I am a mother-maker whose art in sculpture, collage, installation and poetry is a record of life as I see, feel, hear and hold. Through my making using ways of old and ordinary, I hope to remake a different telling of this story of life with no fixed beginning, middle or end. I work with clay, earth, ceramic, paper, wood, ink, paint and found print. In a world of the fast and furious, mine is a slow practice of listening, observing, depth, care, freedom and above all acceptance.
I meld form, pattern, and colour meshing materials drawing on my eastern ancestral knowledge of clay, cloth and colour. With a childhood deeply rooted in Kolkata’s Durga Thakur tradition, my association with clay is not with the ubiquitous pot
but that of the monumental idol of the Durga Protima. To me practice is devotion, sculpture, tradition, alive, story-carrying, godly-mortal, recording and replaying,
shape changing, bringer of communion, maker of community, and gloriously celebrates ours humanity.
Rooted in storytelling, I examine the human experience and contemporary life through intricate patterns and fluid forms. I merge age-old techniques with contemporary sensibilities influenced by Bengal’s artisanal traditions, creating richly
detailed surfaces.
A muddled life of moving lands many times, I am a reader and recorder of people. My visual chronicles of memory and belonging arise through experimenting with scale and materiality, I seek to transforms personal moments into universal reflections, weaving past and present, east with west to create a visual record of the evolving human condition.
Kumar Tuli, Kolkata © Devi Chakrabarti, India, 2018
CONTACT
CHITRAKATHI PUTLI
Glazed Stoneware Ceramic
2025
58cm X 35cm X 35cm
Chitrakathi Putli , meaning “Picture Narrator Doll “ in Hindi, is an illustrated ceramic child’s garment-vessel that is an amalgam of cultural references ; the traditional bamboo and fabric Polloi worn by Manipuri dancers in India, flared skirts of Turkish Whirling Dervish Dancers and the high collared fitted form of the oriental Chèuhngsāam. Illustrated abstract humaniod characters in motion wrap around to create a scrolling chronicle of our collective human cycle of conflict, flight and renewal. The work melds cross-cultural traditions of storytelling, dress, dance, drawing and ceramic to create a contemporary retelling of a tale as old as mankind.