Home, where are you?

Until the age of eleven, Bengal was my world—a place of shimmering moonlight filtering through palm leaves, the intoxicating scent of gulmohar blossoms announcing spring, and the handwritten greeting cards my mother sent to her sister, adorned with idyllic paintings of boats and countryside life. As I grew older and moved away, these memories crystallized into a romanticized vision of Bengal, shaped by my absence and longing.

But distance also sharpened my awareness of a parallel narrative—a version of Bengal stripped and reconstructed by colonial Orientalism. The East India Company’s gaze reduced it to images of poverty, stagnation, and despair. This deliberate erasure has fueled my frustration over the years, especially as I lived in Canada, longing to depict Bengal through my lens—not as an exotic “other” but as I experienced it: layered, intimate, and alive.

Home, Where Are You is a reconciliation of these two Bengals: the one etched into my mythology and the one flattened by external narratives. It is a meditation on belonging, memory, and loss, witnessing Bengal not through imposed frames but through the intimate lens of my own journey—both as a child shaped by its essence and as an artist searching for a way back.