Soumya Sankar Bose | Where the Birds Never Sing at Experimenter Outpost

Where the Birds Never Sing, by Magnum Foundation grantee Soumya Sankar Bose, brings together Bose’s long-term project on the Marichjhapi massacre, the forcible eviction in 1979 of Bengali lower caste refugees from the Marichjhapi Island in Sundarbans, West Bengal, India and the subsequent death of thousands by police gunfire, starvation, and disease.

With almost no written record or official documentation of this incident, Bose researched and re-enacted the memories of survivors, weaving together perspectives on this painful history that faces slow erasure from collective memory.

Last month, Experimenter Outpost brought this project back to Kumirmari, Sundarbans, as a series of enlarged images that stand across from the Marichjhapi Island as witnesses of the unspeakable atrocities committed over forty years ago. The outdoor exhibition will remain installed until any future cyclone destroys it. For more information about the exhibit, visit this link.

This project was made with the support of the Magnum Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the India Foundation for the Arts, and the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art. Documentation by Team Cocoon.