Sayan Chanda (he/him) (b. Kolkata) is an artist from India, living and working in London.
Sayan reimagines votive objects, folk narratives and indigenous rituals as hybrid ambiguous forms that function as totems, portals and talismans in a landscape of speculative mythology. Deploying tapestry weaving, stitching, dyeing and hand-building, he works intuitively with fibre and clay giving physical forms to his anxieties, mythologies, and individual and collective memory. His works exist as relics; vestiges of working through inner monologues, that sit outside of place, culture and period.
EDUCATION
2020 - 2021 - MA Fine Art - Camberwell College of Art (University of the Arts London), UK
2009 - 2013 - B.DES Textile Design - National Institute of Design, India
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025 (upcoming) - Between the Two Fires, Cample Line, Thornhill
2024 - Reverberations: Textile as Echo, Green Art Gallery, Dubai
2024 - Frieze, London, with Jhaveri Contemporary
2024 - Actions for the Earth, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas
2024 - This Country, Crafts Council, London
2024 - Right Foot First, Hampi Art Labs, Karnataka
2024 - Actions for the Earth, The Block Museum of Art, Illinois
2023 - Chamber, Cooke Latham Gallery, London
2023 - British Textile Biennial, Fragments of Our Time, Lancashire
2023 - Art Dubai, with Jhaveri Contemporary
2022 - They Speak in a Hundred Ways, Commonage Projects, London
2022 - A Smear and the Crown, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai
2022 - Frieze, London, with Jhaveri Contemporary
2022 - Art Antwerp with Modesti Perdriolle Gallery
2022 - Radical Residency VII, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London
2022 - A Plot Hatched By Two, Warbling, London
2021 - London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London
2021 - Group Show, South London Gallery, London
2021 - Hanging Gardens, Nature Morte, New Delhi
2020 - Pause - Method, Mumbai
RESIDENCY AND AWARDS
2025 - Cove Park Funded Residency (forthcoming)
2023 - Thread artist’s residency, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Sinthian, Senegal
2023 - Sarabande Foundation Studio Residency, London
2022 - Radical Residency VII, Unit 1 Gallery | Worshop, London
2022 - The UC Berkeley South Asia Artist Prize- Honourable Mention
FEATURES AND PUBLICATIONS
2025 - Architectural Digest
2024 - Kantha - Sustainable Textiles and Mindful Making by Ekta Kaul
2023 - Uncovering the work of Sayan Chanda at Commonage Projects
2022 - Architectural Digest
2022 - Vogue India
2022 - Mint Lounge
2022 - Take On Art
2022 - Mid-Day, India
2021 - India Today
2021 - Patriot, India
2020 - Asian Curator
2020 - Warp and Weft Magazine
2020 - Design India Magazine
2019 - Cocoa and Jasmine magazine
2017 - Livemint, India