Artist in Residence, Stockholm, 1 June–28 August 2026

Arijit Bhattacharyya (b. 1994, Bally, West Bengal) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans installations, drawings, paintings, murals, textiles, sculptures, videos, performances, cooking, and publications. In recent years, he has been working on alternative timelines of plant-human interdependent mutation, where vegetal agency emerges as a revolutionary protagonist countering populist imaginaries of technocracy and apocalypse. Within these imagined temporalities, he engages with real-world phenomena such as right-wing propaganda, nationalism, unlawful detentions, political incarcerations, hate speech, and legitimised state-sponsored violence. His work often involves collaborations with activists, citizen journalists, and independent journalists, resulting in publications and videos that articulate counter-narratives.

Photo: Devadeep Gupta

Arijit Bhattacharyya

During the residency at IASPIS, Bhattacharyya will work on his ongoing project How to Detain a Forest, which forms the next chapter of a novel developed through multiple exhibition projects. Over the course of three months, he will focus on articulating questions related to citizenship, rivers, horror, and political fiction.

He is currently part of the Berlin Programme for Artists at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Selected solo exhibitions include A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies, Künstlerhof Frohnau and Berliner Programm Künstlerische Forschung, Berlin; Whispering Sea, Artlink, Fort Dunree; Sea of Forests, ChertLüdde, Berlin; From Forests We Are and Forests We Will Be, Kunstverein Braunschweig. He is an alumnus of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda.

Instagram: @arijitbh