London-based, Kolkata-born Sayan Chanda is a textile artist who transforms the gallery at Cample Line into a temple-like space. In Between the Two Fires, the artist’s presence is substantiated through votive masks which question how objects are given meaning, and speak to Chanda’s own memories with textiles, deities, and shrines in Kolkata. Familiarities are shifted through his ceramic work, which all work alongside charcoal sketches that illustrate his process of creation. I spoke to Chanda about the show, finding out how his work is inflected by generations of making, and how it’s simultaneously collaborative whilst remaining his own.
What made you put these mediums of ceramic, textiles, and drawings together?
For me, it always starts with a form and then I think about what materially makes sense to achieve that. With ceramics, I’m a bit limited with scale as I’m not a trained ceramicist, whereas with textiles I am more confident about scaling up. I’ve also started looking at my drawings as the final work instead of just preparatory, and they’re in the space downstairs for this show.
I’m drawn to softer materials because there’s a sense of comfort within them – they have an inherent sense of memory. All three materials used – ceramic, textiles, and charcoal – they all have a past life, which I find interesting. These are all things I have realised after working with these materials for a while; I know now that’s why I’m drawn to them.
Could you delve deeper into the memories that the materials hold?
I’m from Kolkata and it’s an unusual city, I feel like it’s very textured for a metro city. Simultaneously, the place where I grew up always felt like a small village. We had shrines of local goddesses all around my house, and my grandmother’s temple in the house as well. I was never drawn to the usual things that boys were expected to be doing at that age, but I think these things allowed me to create my own reality.
Still, my references are similar objects of worship. A shift happened when I moved to London around seven years back. Being away from India made me re-look at these things and made them more pronounced and important. I was suddenly put into this scenario which was completely different and I didn’t know anything about the art world. These things helped keep me grounded.
I work a lot with Kantha, which is a vintage quilt. The first one I worked with belonged to my grandmother. Using materials which have not been necessarily made by me and giving them a second life, I think that sort of helps me. It helped me create a distance from my work, and I find that comfortable because I feel terrified at the idea of complete ownership of the work. It dissipates the responsibility to be working with quilts which have been stitched by women 70 years back, 80 years back, 50 years back.
Why do you think you want to be more collaborative in that way?
I think it’s essentially to do with everything being connected. The materials, the references, the stories, the narratives, and the objects. A quilt is a generational object – it has been made by my grandmother, mended by my mother, and then by me. Similarly, when I look at objects of worship or shrines and the idea of folk religion in general, it’s always collaborative. The only thing different here is that I make everything myself. In my design education, I always worked with weavers and artisans before I moved towards an art-led practice. There has always been a sense of collaboration rather than a singular force.
When thinking about memory, you’re looking towards the past. Does your practice reflect the present at all?
The references I work with are as much current as they are connected with the past, as the core of my work is not religious at all. The show is to do with how human sentiments materialise in votive objects, or how an object is transformed by the simple act of changing what they are for.
A lot of my research involves postcolonial interpretations of certain narratives, and there’s also the patriarchal rewritings in these texts written by men. It’s interesting to see how certain goddesses have transformed with time, as if somebody was fearing that they’d get more important. These things are as current as they were when they were made, but that theme doesn’t necessarily come to the fore. I like that balance between overt and covert.
The masks in your show are described as a bridge between what we don’t understand and what is real. Could you explain what is meant by that and how it connects to your presentation of identity?
Masks have been a continuing motive in my work. It mainly comes from my own experience with mask traditions. In Kolkata it was quite common to see communities who dressed up as gods and goddesses, performing mostly for money. In India and around the world there are countless ritual performances which require the performer to wear a mask and channel some sort of supernatural energy.
On the political side of it, there are certain traditions where people from a lower caste can wear a mask for one specific day a year, and they transform into deities and gods – then the higher caste people take blessings from them. It’s interesting to me how objects have the power to alter generational conditioning even if it’s just for a day.
Between the Two Fires is on until 1st June 2025 at Cample Line, Cample Mill, Dumfriesshire, DG3 5HD
