Rathin Barman: Unsettled Structures

Lived spaces are not just pieces of architecture; they are anthropological tools to explore history, memory, and even human behavior. Over time, the relationship between homes and their occupants changes through structural additions or functional shifts. Rathin Barman: Unsettled Structures emerges from many such stories of the restructuring of domestic space. In particular, the artist considers the legacy of colonial mansions in the artist’s hometown of Kolkata, India. These grand, luxurious buildings have been repopulated over time by migrants who come to the urban center to escape conflict, climate change, famine, or political unrest. Barman’s sculptures begin with a sense of dwelling borne out of the isolation of the pandemic and in light of ongoing pressures to house the dispossessed across the globe.

Rathin Barman lives and works in Kolkata, India. Barman completed both undergraduate and graduate degrees at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata; and has been exhibited in select solo exhibitions such as There is Now a Wall (2022), Dimensional Distortion (2020), Experimenter, Kolkata; and Home, and a Home, curated by Suman Gopinath, Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2016). Select group exhibitions include The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10); Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; and Deeper within its Silence, curated by Sumakshi Singh, Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi.

Janine Mileaf is executive director and chief curator at The Arts Club of Chicago. She is the author of Please Touch: Dada and Surrealist Objects After the Readymade (University Press of New England, 2010), and coeditor of A Home for Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2018) and The Arts Club of Chicago at 100 (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

This exhibition is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.