Born in 1994 in Giridih, Jharkhand, Arjun Das studied at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, where he completed a Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts with a specialization in sculpture (2015, 2017). Arjun’s solo shows include Traces at Museum Forum SchlossPlatz, Switzerland (2019), and Land of the Leal at Dhi Artspace, Hyderabad (2023). He has also presented his work in many group exhibitions, including An Unlocated Window of Myself, Gallery Dotwalk, New Delhi (2022), Metaphor: The Magic It Holds at Dhi Artspace, Hyderabad (2020), Persistence of Memory, Art Positive, New Delhi (2019), and Perspecta 17, Gallery Kolkata (2017). He has participated in many residency programs, including FlACC Workplace Art Residency, Belgium (2022), Emami Art Residency, Kolkata (2021), Arbeitsgruppe Gasteatelier Krone, Switzerland (2019), and Piramal Art Residency, Mumbai (2019). He also participated in the Young Subcontinent project, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2018). He has received the National Scholarship of the Hyundai Art for Hope Grant (2022), the CIMA Annual Show (2019), the Ministry of Culture, India (2018), Abir India Ahmedabad (2018), and the Birla Annual Exhibition, Kolkata (2017). Arjun lives and works in Kolkata, India.

Artist Statement: Inspired by the experiences of the migrant working class in Kolkata, Arjun Das’s work refers to the lives of a younger generation of workers who abandoned their studies in search of a new life in the city, an imagined heaven. Contrary to their expectations, the city pushes them to scarcity and exhaustion, leaving little room to accommodate themselves and their belongings. With an extensive set of conversations with the workers in Bara Bazaar, Kolkata, conjoined with his experiences as a young migrant in the city, he responds to the interiority of a displaced laborer’s everyday life. As Arjun notes, “The spaces the migrants inhabit bear no clear demarcations of a kitchen, washroom, private room, or market." Further, they are like disparate elements assembled to create a makeshift shelter far removed from the comfort of their hometown. I attempt to make these conditions visible by bringing them into the space of art. I also try to capture their urban dreams as they drastically transform into a site of uncertainty.

In his new works, Arjun extends his material preoccupation with wood to new explorations of metal, stone, coal, terracotta roof tiles, and asphalt elements integral to the worker’s daily life in the city. Led by diverse material and interpersonal conversations, he presents stories of unrealized dreams responding to the life he once lived and continues to reflect on.