Sangita Maity (b.1989, Kanthi, West Bengal) lives and works in Kolkata. Sangita completed her post-graduate studies in printmaking from the Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati University. Her work involves extensive research and she uses photographs, photo-etchings, serigraphy and various other mediums to describe her experience. In 2019 Maity participated at the Serendipity Art Festival, Goa, curated by Rahaab Allana; a group show at Shrine Empire, New Delhi; solo show at Clark House Initiative, Mumbai, 2018. She was awarded the Junior Fellowship of Ministry of Culture from the Government of India, 2018 -2020, Experiments 2016, group show at Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai and Khoj Peers Residency 2014 at Khoj Artists Association in New Delhi. Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke’s 2014 edition of ‘Art for Young Collectors’, in Mumbai. She received  Cima Jury Award in 2015.

Her recent projects are based on socio-cultural, geographical, political and environmental issues on excessive rubber plantation in Tripura, India’s second-largest rubber producing state. She interacts with the land and visits rubber planted forests as well as its related factories in Tripura to understand the process, occupational history of the people involved as a labour in the business.

During her last visit, she investigated the environmental impact of genetically modified rubber plants and occupational migration of local tribal communities. Occupational migration has forced the locals to abandon their traditional way of life and practices. Traditions have been altered by their new circumstances, adapting to other cultures to sustain their livelihood. This body of work investigates the relationship between tradition and situation and their contradictions, in the lives of indigenous communities in Tripura.

“I have been engaged with indigenous communities of Barbil in their makeshift settlements over the course of time to understand what they have unlearned in the process of displacement and what they have learned by unlearning their tradition. Series of portraiture, daily living and activities around the transformed landscape and collective narrativity of the displacement process have been represented into my visual practice over a variety of mediums which I find simulates the sensitivity of the issue.” – Sangita Maity