Arka Sinha

This Foundation Project, implemented by IFA under Explorations will explore the photo-chemical and photo-mechanical dimensions of the organic materials sourced from East Kolkata Wetlands, in order to recontextualise the current conditions of the water-based infrastructures surrounding an Indian metropolis in light of the climate crisis. Arka Sinha is the Coordinator for this project. 

Arka Sinha is a Kolkata-based visual artist working primarily with photo-media, whose artistic research-driven practice engages with themes of ecology, memory, matter, and sustainable image-making. He holds a Master of Design in Photography Design from the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Symbiosis School of Visual Arts and Photography.   A recipient of the Shared Ecologies Confluence Grant (2026–27) and the Artdemic Grant, Arka was shortlisted for the Toto Photography Awards in 2026 and received the Kolkata Centre for Creativity Merit Award. His work has been featured in the Chennai Photo Biennale and international group exhibitions. Given his experience, Arka Sinha is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

The artistic research project titled Kumir Danga will eco-somatically explore Kolkata’s amphibious landscape, and its fragile water infrastructure, amid the accelerating climate crisis. Kumir Danga can be roughly translated as ‘crocodile skin’, and drawing its title from a traditional, now-disappearing game in Bengal, where solid land is imagined as a fluid, riverine territory, the project will re-imagine the waste-fed East Kolkata Wetlands through an ecological lens. Arka will interrogate the political history of land use, colonial water management legislation like the Bengal Water Hyacinth Act of 1936. This artistic investigation of the colonial period by framing an ecological site is bracketed in teleology from the pre-colonial modes of coexisting with tidal ecologies, to the projections of future sea-level rise. 

The artistic research process will involve sustainable, regenerative photochemistry to challenge the environmental toxicity, by replacing hazardous commercial photographic developers with plant-based formulations. Arka will collect invasive wetland species, like water hyacinth, duckweed, and wild berries to extract phenolic compounds that activate sustainable photographic developers and anthotype emulsions. This experimental approach will use eco-somatic processes to transform local flora into photographic prints, photograms, site-specific installations, and documented chemical trials of image-making where environmental materials actively co-create the visual archive. 

The outcome of the project will include print-based works, site-specific interventions with found materials, documentation of eco-somatic and alternate processes, along with a short essay on ecological photochemistry. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be photographic and visual documentation of the artistic process, and the short essay.   

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it attempts to frame the wetlands as a complex space of extraction and interspecies survival, where photography is not merely a representational tool, but a material system deeply connected to site-specific environmental realities, where the artistic process of ecological photochemistry responds to contamination, and ecological degradation. 

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.