Chitragati / চিত্রগতি is a collaborative project between artists Abu Kalam Shamsuddin and Benjamin Thorpe that foregrounds a dialectic approach to artistic research. The word “chitragati” translates in English to “picture-movement,” exemplifying an ever-shifting conversation that begins with the identification of research material and is fully realized through engagement with wider circles of artists, scholars, and institutions. Based respectively in Brunswick, Maine and in Khulna, Bangladesh, much of Thorpe and Shamsuddin’s dialogue takes place through video chats and the virtual exchange of notes and images, which then become the basis for written and visual output.
Chitragati currently centers on the work of the early nineteenth-century painter, Sita Ram, who was hired by the British East India Company to paint sites and landscapes alongside the Company’s military tours through the Ganga Delta Region. This project implicates the artists’ relationships with colonialism as they raise questions about how Sita Ram’s work is currently framed and historicized by the western museums in which it now resides. In December 2021, Shamsuddin and Thorpe co-published an essay in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh titled “Sita Ram’s Hybrid Paintings of Nineteenth-century India” (Vol. 66, No. 2), and they are planning further iterations of this project in the coming years.
Here is a link to the essay in the December 2021 Issue of the JASB (Humanities) – https://www.asiaticsociety.org.bd/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Humanities_Dec_2021.pdf
