Debanjan Roy (b.1975, Kolkata, India) is engaged in an ongoing process to articulate the changing social realities of day-to-day India. He has produced a series of works which take Gandhi ostensibly as their subject but this is a Gandhi who is seen holding or interacting with incommensurably contemporary objects. This incommensurability is at the heart of Roy’s project – how do we square India’s history with its present and its future? Roy is part of a generation of artists who has witnessed India’s transformation into a nascent global superpower and like many, is keen to interrogate this process.
Roy completed his Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, in 1998, and Masters in Visual Arts from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, in 2000. In 2016, he was also the artist in residence under the Asiatic Museum, Nice, France, in collaboration with Akar Prakar, India. Roy participated in the 2022 group show Gandhi’s Keepers at Aicon Contemporary.
Roy lives and works in Kolkata, India.