Sayan Chanda

'Between the Two Fires', a solo exhibition at Cample Line

March 29, 2025 - June 1, 2025, Thornhill, Scotland

(A new) Kantha Imaginary – Fiona Jardine

Outside, farmland, rolling hills, a red sandstone mill sitting in the West March. 1 Inside – on the upper floor – a schematic arrangement of hand-sized ceramic motifs that seem to emulate the small tools and bygone trappings of agricultural life: wide-toothed combs and rakes, bent nails, seed drills, augers, sickles and horseshoes. Raised as charms, they gently channel the spirits of initiation and protection. On a gable end wall, an apprehension of black forms, hooked and hanging in triplicate. They are tufted oblongs, outsized masks trailing long tresses, evoking the kind of Victorian mourning jewellery braided from coils of hair, or the sinister, celebratory corn dollies that symbolise the principles of abundance and sacrifice. Elsewhere, like a long, ruddy plough line, a narrow woven band loops reassuringly in accordance with natural gravity, a hemispheric arc, a garland bringing benefice. From the rafters, a fluttering curtain of dark, indigo-violet rag strips vibrates with the legacy of numerous white stitches, flecked with highlights in bright blue and magenta. And on the floor, an offering of ankle-high, conical clay shapes, thumbed and palmed into form. Together, the objects describe an enclave: Between The Two Fires. Simultaneously tethered and untethered, you are drawn into play: observed and observing.

Colonialism and capitalism rely on force, segregation and efficiency: that which is particular, ambivalent or messy is rationalised without regard for the long term spiritual, human or planetary consequences. When Chanda raises a curtain in honour of Aranyani – Who Dwells Within The Trees – it is not without mourning her decline and recognising that her contemporary invisibility is concomitant to the destruction of her habitat and relegation of her values. Overtaken by the pace and regulation of industrial life, Aranyani is a ballad, a cooling balm, a musicality, a gentle shade forced into retreat. Her guard and witness: three quivering Bhuta. At her feet, ghosts of the Sundarban mangrove swamp, glazed, petrified pneumatophores that locate us in a fragile ecosystem – Neither Land Nor Water – a brackish tidal zone at risk from irreversible degradation as the world gets hotter and sea levels rise. At Cample Line, Aranyani anchors the enclave, the ‘reclaimed world’, that Chanda has brought into being: Between The Two Fires is her resurrection. We make meaning best when we are attentive, when we cherish. That blood red garland holds promise – All The Boons You Want.