IFA@Kolkata: The City in the Archive – Part II | Exhibition & Panel Discussion | June 27, 2019 - July 07, 2019 | CSSSC

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
in collaboration with
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC)

invites you to

The City in the Archive – Part II
An exhibition of two projects curated by Diksha Dhar and Nilina Deb Lal

Exhibition Opening: Thursday, June 27, 2019 | 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre (JBMRC)
10 Lake Terrace, Kolkata - 700 029

On view from: June 28 to July 07, 2019 | 02:00 PM to 07:00 PM | JBMRC

Panel discussion led by Diksha Dhar: Saturday, June 29, 2019 | 04:00 PM – 06:00 PM
Panel discussion led by Nilina Deb Lal: Friday, July 05, 2019 | 05:00 PM – 07:00 PM

We are delighted to invite you to The City in the Archive – Part II, an exhibition of two projects curated by Diksha Dhar and Nilina Deb Lal respectively. The cultural history archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) contains a wide variety of visual genres of 19th and 20th century Bengal - an eclectic mix of pictorial, graphic, and photographic images, from an assortment of private and public holdings in the city.

Diksha Dhar and Nilina Deb Lal received Archival and Museum Fellowships from IFA to research the CSSSC Archive. The exhibition, which is on view for a week, will be accompanied by a series of events, including interactive discussions with panelists comprising photographers, urban planners and the curators themselves.

The Lives of Labour in the City curated by Diksha Dhar explores the various ways in which ‘labour’ has been represented within the spectrum of urban visual cultures of Calcutta. It draws on documentary and amateur photography projects of the late 20th century, that concentrated on the unorganised sector of labour in the city and professed to ‘provide a face to the faceless’. The exhibition focuses in particular on a non-commercial documentary photography project by a media organisation called Chitrabani of the 1970s and 80s, which dedicated itself to profiling the diverse trades, occupations and labours of Calcutta’s streets, undertaken at a time when the state of the urban poor in the city was gathering critical attention globally.

A panel discussion titled Chitrabani's Peoples of Calcutta - Giving a Face to the Faceless with Salil Nandi, Santanu Mitra, Shilbhadra Datta (photographers of Chitrabani), and Dr. Ranu Roy Chowdhury, Assistant Professor, IIT, Guwahati, moderated by Diksha Dhar will take place on Saturday, June 29, 2019, 04:00 PM – 06:00 PM at JBMRC.

Dr Diksha Dhar’s interest delves in exploring the category of the historical and its crucial role in identity negotiation and performance among post-colonial subjects.

Rewriting the City: Early Interventions of the Calcutta Improvement Trust curated by Nilina Deb Lalpresents an overview of the programme of works initiated by the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) in the first couple of decades of its existence. The Calcutta Improvement Trust, constituted in late 1911 to ‘provide for the improvement and expansion of Calcutta’, embarked on a range of improvement schemes over the ensuing decades. Juxtaposing archival maps with present-day visual material, the display aims to convey to the viewer the geographic sweep of the CIT interventions, and the extent to which present-day Kolkata as we know it and experience it was the creation of the CIT.

A seminar followed by panel discussion titled CIT and after - Twentieth Century Planning Endeavours in Calcutta will take place on Friday, July 05, 2019, 05:00 PM – 07:00 PM at JBMRC. Led by Nilina Deb Lal together with Dr Tathagata Chatterji, Professor (Urban Management & Governance), Xavier University Bhubaneswar, and Dr Sukanya Mitra, Assistant Professor, (Department of History, Loreto College) and moderated by Tapati Guha-Thakurta (Professor in History, CSSSC), the session will provide glimpses into Calcutta’s brush with planning efforts over the duration of the twentieth century, and the need of the hour vis-à-vis looking toward a sustainable future.

Dr Nilina Deb Lal is a conservation architect and independent researcher, specialising in researching Calcutta’s built environment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

These Archival and Museum Fellowships from India Foundation for the Arts, in collaboration with Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), are made possible with support from Tata Trusts.

Images are drawn from the cultural history archive of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).