Ayan Das

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will include the making of anthotype prints (using light-sensitive plant pigments) from medicinal plants gathered from Thurga river, Ajodhya Hills, Purulia, West Bengal, towards the making of a bilingual Santali-Bengali/ English zine of anthotype prints. Ayan Das is the Coordinator for this project. 

Ayan Das is a visual artist and filmmaker based in West Bengal, India, with an academic background in chemistry. His research-oriented practice integrates documentary photography, film, oral histories, and alternative plant-based printing processes. Working closely with communities, he explores ecology, indigenous life, land, and social transformation. Ayan Das was a finalist for the InDPC Documentary Award, and his work has been exhibited internationally, including in the UK, Bangladesh, and India, and featured in publications like The Caravan. Given his experience, Ayan Das is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The project, which is a continuation of Ayan Das’s ongoing art practice, rooted in the Ajodhya Hills of Purulia, titled On This Land There Are Reasons to Live, will investigate the imminent threat posed by the proposed Thurga Pumped Storage Project to local forests, Adivasi sacred sites, and indigenous livelihoods, using plant-based anthotype printing, to examine ecological violence and community resistance alongside the Santhal Adivasis of Bare Lahar. For this project, Ayan will continue to collaborate with traditional knowledge holders, women elders, a local Kabiraj, and village youth. 

The artistic process will involve ethical plant walks along the Thurga River to identify and collect native flora central to indigenous healing, including Palash, Turmeric, Sal and Neem. The photographic aspect of the project will involve grounding these collected specimens into light-sensitive emulsions, using river water, silt, and local botanical elements. The material exploration in the project will involve contact-printing these organic emulsions with plant specimens and historical documentary imagery, onto heavy paper, creating delicate photographic prints that will gradually fade over time. This intentional fading will serve as a metaphor for the threatened loss of biodiversity, ancestral lands, and indigenous knowledge systems, engendered by insensitive infrastructure expansion. Throughout the artistic process, Ayan will record emulsion recipes in a bilingual lab notebook, alongside Santali plant names, uses, and community narratives, directly involving indigenous knowledge holders as co-authors, towards the making of a bilingual zine, as the testimonial of a fading archive. The project will include temporary outdoor village test hangings and community storytelling circles, inviting residents to interpret the evolving prints. 

The outcome of the project will be a series of anthotype prints made from medicinal plants gathered along the Thurga river, as a fading archive and a bilingual zine. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a bilingual Santali-Bengali/English zine of the anthotype prints.   

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to link environmental observation directly with community-led forest protection and oral histories, challenging documentary photography paradigms by foregrounding fading, fragile, time-sensitive botanical images as alternative forms of witnessing.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm by convening an online gathering of artists coordinating Explorations projects. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from the Prasanta Niyogi Arts Legacy Initiative.