Link Road

Consistent with the interest that Palash Bhattacharjee’s practice maintains in personal encounters with political and cultural history, in Link Road, the artist explores his spoken dialect, formed at the confluence of various flows of history and geography, on the river Karnaphuli, which flows through Chattogram. Within the limits of the language and river unfold efforts to envision existences that are near, remote, marginal, and unknown, relying on remembered fragments and detached assertions of the artist’s perspectives as a child. The work is informed by familial relationships and friendships articulated via personal and spiritual attachments with the river and language dominant in the marginal and coastal life in the border-region with India and Myanmar. The meanderings of language and identity are juxtaposed with a boat adrift on the river, and sporadic recollections of coming to terms with “otherness” as what lies within the self, and not without.

Palash Bhattacharjee is based in Chattogram (Chittagong), Bangladesh. His experimental practice traverses between his personal experiences in relation to different human sensitivities and larger socio-political processes. His video installations are often developed from his performative work, including repetitive actions, gestures or footage that evoke a sense of absurdity. Such repetition upon subject matter that relates to his political and cultural context recalls the errors of larger historical processes. Palash completed his BA and MA from the Department of Fine Arts, University of Chittagong. He was awarded the Asia Pacific Fellowship from the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011 and received a grant from Seoksu Art Project of Stone & Water, South Korea, 2010. His works have been widely exhibited in Bangladesh, FIVA Festival Internacional de Videoarte in Buenos Aires, Chengdu Blueroof Art Festival in China, Studio 21 India, and in festivals across South Korea including Dukwon Gallery, Pusan World Open Art Festival, Gwangju Museum of Art, and many more.