Paula Sengupta

Dr Paula Sengupta (b. 1967) received her BFA in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi in 1989, and an MFA in Printmaking from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan in 1992, where she studied under artist Sanat Kar. She subsequently completed her PhD on the history of Indian printmaking from the same institution. From 1999 to 2003, she was a guest lecturer at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Kolkata, and in 2000, she spent time at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart, Germany as a resident artist.

Sengupta won the Charles Wallace India Trust Research Grant in 2007 and has participated in artist residencies at the Kala Art Institute, Berkeley USA (1997–1998) and Britto Arts Trust, Dhaka (2008). Shas participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions over the years, notably Real & Constructed Memories (2004) at Right Lines Gallery, Bengaluru; No.8 Shorts Bazaar/#8 Short Street (2006 and 2007) at Project 88 Mumbai and Akar Prakar, Kolkata; Rivers of Blood (2010) at Chemould Prescott Road; Connecting Threads – Textiles in Contemporary Practice (2018-2019) at Bhau Daji Lad Museum; and. Her most recent curatorial project includes a retrospective on Anupam Sud at DAG, New York.

Paula Sengupta has worked as an artist and writer simultaneously. Her art practice, while using forms of printmaking such as woodblock and broadsheets, also involves a variety of textiles and techniques that are central to the history of South Asian and Bengali craft, such as chintz, muslin and nakshi kantha embroidery. Her work also reflects on regional and personal histories, particularly those of women and Bengali families affected by the Partition, as seen in No.8, Shorts Bazaar/#8 Short Street (2006), an installation on the seven generations of women who had lived in her mother-in-law’s ancestral home. Her written work involves a detailed exploration of the history of printmaking.