Arunanshu Chowdhury

Arunanshu Chowdhury (b.1969, Hoogli, West Bengal). He studied art at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, acquiring both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Fine Art there. Later moving from his native Bengal to Gujarat, much of Chowdhury’s body of work bears testimony to the changing role of the city. Having spent
most of his life in Baroda, Chowdhury’s art confronts urban violence in a manner which does not shock, but rather leaves a lingering feeling of vulnerability, almost haunting the viewer.  Playing with the idea of historical memory, Chowdhury’s work can be called a reaction to acts of extreme violence. Highlighting the spectator-like role of the civilian, Chowdhury introduces the motif of the rickshaw – the most common mode of transport in Baroda, as a silent witness to urban atrocity. Other everyday objects, like the barber’s chair or a rocking chair play protagonists in his paintings, which teem with narratives but are unable to speak.