#InConversation with Suman Chandra

Suman - As I kept roaming around these areas for my research, I realised that it is an ever changing landscape with no concrete historical documentation. It’s a place where the truth varies from person to person, be it the government officials, mine managers or the miners— everyone’s narrative of the truth is different. Being present within so many narratives confuses my mind because what I perceive with my own eyes, again, brings forward another narration. That’s why I always try to simply narrate my observation from a natural point of view without taking any sides. 

Sanjana - Your work with coal mines has been 5 years or more in the making. As your subject matter it is something you feel you are still yet to understand. In fact, you told me you plan to have an archival aspect to it, many years down the line. Can you speak about that a bit?

Suman - Coal mine is such a subject that has many aspects within its subjective layers. Land destruction, human condition, politics, economic structure, cultural replacement, migration etc.. With each new visit, I encounter one new layer within this land. That is why exploring this one subject will take many years, if I focus on one aspect at a time. And that is why I have planned to make an archive of my whole research after 10 years. Photography , videography, dairies, drawings, painting, sculpture, found objects, installation—everything, so that a viewer can easily understand the journey of my understanding.

Suman - Sometimes I collect documents like a journalist, sometimes I collect narration from the layers of history. Sometimes, I only psychologically analyse all my understandings to constitute and transform into my visual language. 

Sanjana - Can you speak about the development of your visual language? As an artist, you use painting, sculpture, installation and drawings to express yourself. Does each medium help in portraying a different aspect of your practice?

Suman - Through sculptures, I try to explore the material values and sensibilities. For paintings, I mainly try to understand how coal as a medium tries to control a vast economic and political system. My approach for both are very different. I chose to work in large scale paper and canvas so that the vastness of the empty landscape is conveyed properly. It interested me that the continuous shifting and changing going on under the different layers of earth are caused more by humans than nature. These man made impressions create an ever changing interplay of positive and negative spaces. Keeping these aspects in mind, I build a landscape on my drawings by going through the processes similar to what a coalmine landscape undergoes. 

Sanjana - By “processes similar to what a coalmine landscape undergoes” you mean?

Suman - I always want to keep the mining processes as a part of my paintings and sculpture making process. All the ways of destruction in mining like digging, extracting, layering—I have tried to put them as languages in my works. In this way, my making process follows the same process as well while reaching towards an end product. The end result here is just as important as the process.