“Comics Conclave” at IIT Gandhinagar to exhibit a few pages from Satyajit Ray’s original sketchbook
Gandhinagar: The upcoming “Comics Conclave” at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) is going to be a remarkable event for visual narrative and film enthusiasts as they will also get a chance to delve into the lesser-known artistic side of the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray. As a part of the main Comics exhibition of the event – “An Exhibition of Low Art”, organised on January 21-22, 2023, the Institute is going to exhibit some selected and curated images from the original sketchbook of Satyajit Ray with support from Mr Sandeep Ray, eminent filmmaker and son of Satyajit Ray, and Pinaki De, Comics scholar, designer, and Associate Professor at the Department of English, Raja Peary Mohan College, University of Calcutta.
This will include a few prints of the pages from his original sketchbook, which have been selected specifically for this event at IITGN, and reflect his approach to the sequential graphic narrative and how it supplemented his cinematic language.
It is a known fact that Satyajit Ray was a comics enthusiast, and his personal collection of comics (now archived at his residence) can be the envy of many. Despite his abiding interest in sequential graphic narratives recorded in many interviews across time, there is very little to show in terms of his active engagement with the form. The only published evidence comes in the form of four comic strips that he did for the covers of Sandesh magazine. However, if we delve deeper into his notebooks and sketchbooks, we can see him playing around with ideas about this visual form. In fact, he presented “Pather Panchali” and “Ravishankar” (a film that never materialised) in the form of a sequential visual script in the 1950s.
Apart from this, the “Exhibition of Low Art” will also showcase comics by Orijit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee, Amruta Patil, Nikhil Gulati, Longform Collective, and artworks and artefacts on Indian Traditional storytelling by students of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (mentored by Gayatri Menon). The exhibition has been curated by Prof Argha Manna, Artist-in-Residence, IITGN, and it will be open for viewing from 4 to 8 pm on both days.