Soumya Sankar Bose

b. 1990, India

Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990, Midnapore, India) is an artist based in Kolkata, India. He reconstructs archival materials and oral history into photography, films, alternative archives, and artist books. Bose interweaves long-term research and engagement with local communities to accentuates the experiences of the marginalised-yet-resilient of his home post-Partition Bengal. Blending fiction and reality, Bose’s work opens up the realms of memory, desire, vulnerability, and identity.

Soumya Sanker Bose was awarded Magnum Foundation’s Social Justice Fellowship for Full Moon on a Dark Night in 2017, was Hello! India’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2023, and received the Louis Roederer Discovery Public Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles for A Discreet Exit through Darkness in 2023. Bose also received The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (Amol Vadehra Art Grant), The Agroecology Fund, Murthy Nayak Foundation Photobook Grant, Henry Luce Foundation grant and India Foundation for the Arts’ grant. Where the Birds Never Sing was selected as PhMuseum’s Best Photobooks of 2020 and shortlisted for the Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award as well as the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2021. His works are in the permanent collections of The Royal Ontario Museum, The Ishara Art Foundation, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Les Rencontres d’Arles, Duncan Aviation, and many others. In 2022, he was an artist-in-residence at Delfina Foundation, London.

Bose’s work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Art Review Asia, NPR, Granta, BBC, The Caravan, and Indian Expressa among others. He has also worked on photography commissions for Le Monde, HSBC Bank, Bloomberg Businessweek, Financial Times, The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Acumen etc.

Soumya Sankar Bose is represented by Experimenter Gallery, Kolkata and Mumbai, India.