Hyperallergic: An Indian-American Artist’s Self in Pieces

In his new paintings, Sangram Majumdar seems to be driven by the desire to hold together the different aspects of his dual identity.

 

For a 2024 exhibition in Mumbai (for which I wrote a catalog essay), Sangram Majumdar explored the contrast between visceral presence and memory’s shadow, as well as the double state of consciousness that is inherent in having to constantly realign here and there. Born in India, he moved to the United States with his family when he was 13. He is acutely aware that he is neither at home nor a complete stranger to two complex cultures and histories. It is that unstable, in-between space that he continues to explore in the 13 oil paintings and one wall drawing, dating from 2022 to 2025, on view in The Sleep of Reason, at Natalie Karg Gallery. 

 

For much of his career, Majumdar, an artist I’ve long known and covered, and included in a show I curated, was an observational painter with a broad formal range, encompassing everything from highly accomplished representational paintings to abstract images grounded in direct observation. These pieces, created through layers and fragments, invited prolonged looking while resisting interpretation. Their inchoateness mirrored his inner state of vulnerability, and the desire to be seen rather than projected upon. 

 

Building upon the work in the 2024 show, his current pieces are a dense bricolage of diverse sources, including images derived from using strips of different colored tape to convey the awkwardness of his child learning to walk, as well as gestures found in Western art, Persian miniatures, Indian folk art, and mass media. By studying images from different cultures and epochs, he has discovered a coherence of meaning assigned to particular expressions across many cultures, and has isolated others that are specific to geographic areas and tradition, such as Hindu art.