If Aveek Sen knew one thing, it was how to look at things differently and then show them in a different light with his eloquence and erudition, always managing to find that ‘extra’ bit in the ordinary. Fourth Conversation Piece | Aveek Sen, curated by Kallol Datta in collaboration with Anindya Hajra and Chandrima Bhattacharya, opened on December 8 at Experimenter, Hindustan Road, marking the beginning of the Kolkata Queer Arts Month.
Interspersed with Aveek’s voice and words are artworks by Mahesh Baliga and Rujuta Rao, both connected through their intersecting journeys with Aveek. His brilliant writings, often elusive to friends and family, as noted during the opening, find resonance in the exhibition that forgoes curatorial notes or labels on the walls, embracing Aveek’s unapologetic creative vision where meanings evolved through a play of associations. Aveek’s unwavering commitment to his beliefs and craft resonates in an intaglio print, produced by him with the help of Shashi Gaur, bearing the translated Bengali note: “What will I do with something that won’t grant me immortality?”
In Mahesh’s painting, we see Aveek hunched over on his bed, casually trimming nails. His books, writing desk, and a poster peeping from the background delicately depict the kind of non-assuming, innate genius Aveek was. This image encourages a pause, a moment to let the world crystallise and be observed — a reminder of the past exchanges between Mahesh and Aveek, where the mundane was sensorially savoured, shared, and offered by the artist and the writer in an exchange of words and visuals.
Rujuta Rao, whose carefully crafted parchment fragments were on display, elucidated for the benefit of those present how her artwork was conceived after a story she wrote about a woman who successively kept losing her limbs with involuntary teleportations. The fragile contraptions are the woman’s means to map and unite her scattered selves, she explained. The exhibition, likewise, prompts us to hold together the multifaceted, omnipresent Aveek in the manner most meaningful to each.
