Annotations was a series of artist commissions for Drawing Room’s Outset Study. Including 6 artists over a 3-year period, each artist undertook a period of supported residency, researching the library collection to create a work for Outset Study – using the wall, the space, or intervening within the library collection itself.
Best known for his graphic novels and films that tell stories through a combination of free hand drawings and text, Banerjee has developed a new work which brings together Indian classical music and librarie.
Banerjee’s newly commissioned work for Outset Study at Drawing Room, Annotations 3 entitled ‘The Many Half Lives of Vasundhara Rangarajan’ is a work of fragmented narrative, pieced together from episodes in one woman’s life. Consisting of fifteen separate scenes, these drawings are held together by a single raga – Raag Bilawal. Ms Rangarajan first heard Raag Bilawal as a child. Every time Bilawal plays it awakens images from her past, incidents barely remembered, yet fondly recollected. These play tricks on her mind, creating nostalgia for places she has not encountered and incidents that never took place.
Sarnath Banerjee (b. 1972, Kolkata, IN) lives and works in Berlin, DE. Studied (BSc Hons.) Biochemistry, University of Delhi, IN and (M.A) Image and Communication, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK (2003). Awarded Best Young Publisher Award, the British Council (2008); nominated for The Television Network award, Hong Kong for his debut film 12 Years after…on the Bhopal Gas tragedy. Selected solo exhibitions: Frieze Art Fair, New York, US (2015); Barwa Khiladi, Project 88, Mumbai, IN (2012); Frieze Art Fair, London, UK (2009); Tito Years, Project 88, Mumbai, IN (2008); Complex systems, Karton Gallery, Budapest, HU (2007). Selected group exhibitions: Doublethink: Doublevision, Pera Museum, Instabul, TR (2016); Corruption: Everybody Knows, e-flux, New York, US (2015); Being an Island, DAAD, Berlin, DE (2013); Lines of Control, Johnson Museum, Cornell University, US (2012); Frieze London, with Project 88, Mumbai (2012); Paris-Delhi-Bombay… Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR (2011).
ON VIEW: 9th September 2017 – 18th February 2018