This spring, CAMPLE LINE is delighted to present Between the Two Fires, a new solo exhibition by artist Sayan Chanda (born 1989, Kolkata, India), opening 29 March 2025. The exhibition will bring together more than 20 new and recent works by Sayan, including handwoven tapestry works, ceramic objects and drawings, and will be installed across both floors of the building.
Sayan trained in textile design with an orientation towards weaving at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in India, after which he worked with Women Weave, a group of weavers based around Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh in Central India, and then with Aranya, a natural dyeing unit situated on a tea plantation in Munnar in Kerala in the southwest of the country. Curator Grant Watson has suggested that the materials, techniques and concerns that he brings to bear in his studio practice are underpinned by his rigorous training and his experiences working with artisan communities of weavers, as well as by the rituals, folklore and living craft traditions with which he was surrounded when growing up in Kolkata. This personal relevance is vital: ‘Even though it might not be apparent, I like the colours and the materials I use or the textures I’m trying to create to be informed by a conscious reference…’
Sayan has spoken for instance about how as a child his grandmother and father used to tell him stories about how certain folk goddesses are worshipped and the associated objects in the rituals: ‘When I moved to London, this part of my life felt so far removed. With the distance, I realised how important these objects are to me and I naturally began to create forms from my memories, whether that be the memory of a folk performance I witnessed as a child from my balcony or the memories of holding these ritual objects between my hands. They have helped me investigate and understand how human sentiment is materialised in objects and the power they can hold.’
Working primarily with hand weaving methods and increasingly with clay, Sayan reimagines votive objects, folk narratives and indigenous rituals as ambiguous hybrid forms that function as totems, portals, amulets and guardian deities. These works draw from what Sayan has referred to as ‘ruminations on memory and identity’, and from his research into lost or marginalised folkloric beings or female divinities whose attributes and powers have been subject to colonial manipulation, distortion and reinterpretation over the years, often maligned in Indological scholarship and as a consequence effaced from wider socio-cultural beliefs or practices.
Over the last three years, Sayan has developed a series of large-scale monochromatic tapestries as a means to restore monumentality and expressive and spiritual power to forgotten Vedic goddesses such as Jyestha, often framed as a harbinger of misfortune, or Nirrti, who is mentioned in texts dating back to 1500-1000 BCE. Once considered a primal goddess, an embodiment of earth, rivers and creation itself, over time Nirrti gradually became associated with darker characteristics including decay, disorder, misery and chaos.
Sayan has suggested that his tapestries function liminally like portals or vessels, often making architectural and spiritual references to openings and hieratic arrangements. Of the holes and slits in these larger works, Sayan has also said: ‘In Kolkata, old houses like the one I grew up in have louvred windows with wooden shutters. I remember sitting by the window for hours, looking out to the street through these shutters, especially during monsoons…When I make an object, I feel as if I’m still looking through that kind of window.’
Between the Two Fires will form a speculative landscape or ‘reclaimed world’ that is deeply syncretic, drawing upon different traditions of belief, ‘where deities, demigods, guardians and totems coexist.’ The exhibition’s title refers to the two sacred ritual fires mentioned in the Vedas, an Indian collection of poems and hymns written in 1500-1200 BC and revered by the ancient Vedic people who lived in northern India. In his book Ardor, which explores the Vedas, Roberto Calasso says of the two ritual fires: ‘They provide the tension on which everything rests. The miracle behind everything can happen only here. Only here can things acquire meaning.’
For the show, Sayan will bring together works in tapestry, clay and charcoal that are grounded materially and culturally and at the same time seem otherworldly and sacrosanct. On the far gable wall upstairs, he will install a group of three long Bhutas that are part supernatural mask, part evil-eye charm. Made with black yarns reclaimed from Kantha quilts, they combine sections of tightly compact weave with long fringes of black jute fibre, which is traditionally used in the making of clay idols of Hindu deities that are often crafted by Muslim artisans in rural West Bengal. Sayan has said: ‘I have always been drawn to masks because they are a bridge between what we don’t understand and what is real.’ The exhibition will also include a smaller mask piece in the downstairs front entrance space, whose placement will be reminiscent of masks positioned near to the doorways of houses in India to ward off malign spirits.
On an adjacent wall, there will be an array of stoneware sculptures such as Ksetrapala or Yaksha 1 (both 2022), that function as relics, combining references to shrines, idols and ritual objects such as crowns or ceremonial lamps. Each is glazed with a metallic glaze that recalls Ashtadhatu, an alloy of eight different metals that is used to make divine idols in Jain and Hindu temples: ‘I want these pieces to have the duality of modest clay as the core and a precious exterior much like deities or religious objects in shrines.’
Two new handwoven tapestries include a larger-scale weaving hanging from the trusses, and adjacent to that, a new garland tapestry, both of which use reclaimed, dyed fabric from Kantha quilts. These will introduce notes of colour that are familiar across Sayan’s body of work: ‘The reds are from vermillion powder, yellows from turmeric, blacks and greys are from clay and ash from the Ganga. I also refer to colour associations in folk narrative like black and blue for the goddesses of snakes or charms to ward off the evil eye…’
Lastly, Sayan will use a large piece of reclaimed sandstone as a plinth for several freestanding ceramic objects that reference the pneumatophores, or aerial roots, of mangrove trees from the Sundarban forest area which lie in the Ganga delta in West Bengal, a volatile region that has experienced humanitarian and cultural crises, and faces on-going ecological challenges.
Sayan Chanda is represented by Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. Between the Two Fires is Sayan’s first exhibition in Scotland.
