Project Gauripur House (PGH) 2023, A Heritage Site Multidisciplinary Art Project, BIG I ART FOUNDATION SILIGURI, On May 17th, 2023 , Kalimpong,
Curator - Ghosh.

Shri Brajendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury, the zamindar of Gouripur in Mymensingh, now a part of Bangladesh, was the owner of the Gouripur House. The home occupies a large amount of space; the mountains are cut; the steps are occasionally constructed by arranging large stones; and finally, the 64 stairs are divided into a large area. The house is stunning, bright, and surrounded by large trees. It has enormous, tall French windows and doors and charming balconies that overlook the magnificent Kanchenjunga. The authentic date of its construction is unknown. It was established as the summer residence of the Roy Choudhury family. Back then, Kalimpong was a pristine, appealing, and lovely holiday destination, according to all accounts. The visitors were surrounded by pine, fir, birch, maple, and alder evergreen forests. The early summers and autumns were especially wonderful because of the abundance of bright rhododendrons and exuberant varieties of orchids. There are several memories of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Kalimpong. Rabindranath not only took at least four extended vacations in this location Between April 1938 and September 1940, but he also became seriously ill in this location. The illness from which he never fully recovered was this one. The period of illness was followed by his death on August 7, 1941. Gouripur House gave us some of Rabindranath's greatest final poems, including Janmadin ('Birthday"), which he read aloud from this same home on All India Radio on his 78th birthday (in 1938): My birthday is today. The poem recalls a further incident of severe illness. The poet collapsed abruptly and was in a coma for several days. Shantiniketan, India, in September 1937. Therefore, the phrase "dark depths of stupor" was used. His health was never the same again after the recovery process. Which took a very long time. As death and life "share the same seat," the poem goes on to conjure the startling vision of the declining moon embracing the rising star. Rabindranath only ever returned to Kolkata from Kalimpong in September 1940.

Now the abandoned architecture's external wall has a marble plaque that serves as a poet reciting the lush, flowing lyrics aloud in Gouripur House. Thick foliage is a memento for the infrequent visitors of that sunny day in May 1938 when it was grown all over the Gouripur house; the windows are broken, and the interiors are in bad shape too. Even the approach road, which is part of the property, had seen better days. The structure itself is on the verge of collapsing at any time. Some portions of the house were severely damaged during the earthquake on September 18th, 2011.
Once you enter this sprawling house, the first thing that catches your eye is the elongated wooden staircase and multi-coloured French-style windows with geometric patterns. The numerous lovely glass ventilators in this two-story building, which has a tin roof and a false ceiling made of wood, are only there to let light into the main rooms. Every significant room in mountain homes typically has its own fireplace, yet despite all of these amenities, you won't find a single item of furniture in this Gouripur house. For a moment, it steers you away from the hustle of everyday life and transcends you into a bygone era. As you walk further in, the rooms and passages of the house seem to tell many stories.

A few of the site-specific artworks have been produced using a contemporary multidisciplinary approach while staying sympathetic to historical events and taking note of the deteriorated remnants of the current home's architecture. The architecture has developed an intimate link with the abandoned structure that goes beyond just its historical significance. Every piece of site-specific art is continuously interacting with this void, and These temporary installations of site-specific art can be seen on the balcony wall, the fireplace in the hall room, and the side of the stairs leading to the second floor of Gouripur House.

An antique mirrored artwork was mounted on the centre wall of this ancient wooden stairway after I took note of this obvious fact. The reflection of the identical staircase is also shown in this mirror artwork. It appears as though the staircase itself wants to recognise the owner of the worn-in footsteps in each visitor to the home or to catch a glimpse of the imprint that the man's long-ago experiences have left on him. In this mirror's reflection, though, the mark of that emptiness is solidifying with time. Similar to how an archaeologist unearths Egyptian white mummies in a desolate desert, this inanimate house's dead wall is revealed through a few randomly selected rectangular paper frames. This is similar to a finding where the present's deterioration speaks of the past. These blank frames are blending into the home and becoming wall decorations. Constantly seeing their sincere and reciprocal discussion will raise people's awareness of exterior ornamentation and decoration to an intellectual level. Whenever you do a Google search about Gouripur House in Kalimpong, Guru Rabindranath Tagore's 78th birthday in 1938 frequently appears. A modest clay empty vase with the words "জন্মদিন" (Birthday) was placed in Tagore's bedroom on May 17, 2023, to symbolise the reunion of that historical phenomenon with the emptiness of the current Gouripur House through "PROJECT GOURIPUR HOUSE (PGH)."
Another strangely beautiful architectural design of Gouripur House and its practical utility are eye-catching: making multiple square, colourful glass windows to let the daylight come from the wooden ceiling just above the large bedrooms of the house. As a result, even the dark rooms inside during the day created an enchanting scene with beautiful soft coloured light, which even today shrouds Rabindranath Tagore's bedroom in solitude and emptiness. Seeing this dramatic stage of light created inside the room, an actor was needed, and therefore a white, hairy, synthetic fibre-abstract protagonist stood in static mode as a metaphor for an unknown story in this empty room. This fictional character is like the only ingestion in this empty room, absorbing the soft light through his whole body.
In the frigid light, the architecture of the vacant Gouripur House occasionally showed a dramatic or intellectual tone, or it seemed like an older storyteller expressing his own viewpoints through this undertaking (PGH).

BIG I ART FOUNDATION SILIGURI with A.M."ART MULTI-DISCIPLINES" KOLKATA  Presents 'LONG AND SHORT OF IT', Ayan Mukherjee (Curator), Dipayaan Ghhosh (Exhibitor)- 24th - 26th November 2021 Venue: Ramkinkor Pradrashani Kaksh(Dinbandhu Mancha, Siliguri Information Center), Siliguri

Artists

Aditya Basak | Atin Basak | Arindam Chatterjee | Chhatrapati Dutta | Chandra Bhattarcharjee | Jayashree Chakravorty | Srikanta Paul

This dogmatic biasness in selection of art audience gave birth to a feeling of consistent dissatisfaction and incompleteness in my mind and I was definitely not ready to walk with it. I wanted to stretch the boundary of art viewers as I felt it was severely needed for a progressive future. I genuinely believe that we need to involve and engage people with Visual Arts from diversified walk of life negating the creation of a psychologically drawn ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ of discrimination of art audience and be impartial and egalitarian towards sharing our practice with sincerity with people who may not prevail in their lives as creative pundits. With time visual arts have heedlessly distanced itself from a society of people who could have been persistent art audience. I believe the art practitioners in turn would get an opportunity to engage and create dialogues with a much larger community of people. Constructing Visual art projects like exhibitions, workshops, Artist Talk and Presentations in the subaltern cities and towns who are outside that ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ we have made with persisting metropolitan snobbery which in turn gives birth to precariously formulated Ego can jolly well be a positive step towards it. It may take time but we would be on the high way towards building an extended visual arts community.' This Exhibition titled 'Long and Short of It' which I curated was hosted by Siliguri Information Centre in Siliguri and co-organised by Big I Art Foundation Siliguri and A.M (Art Multi disciplines) Kolkata is definitely my first of many such attempts. I would like to thank and congratulate Big I Art Foundation, Siliguri, Dipayaan Ghhosh and the whole team for the unconditional love and effort in creating the space and opportunity for this Project. A big shout out to our Media partners 'The Siliguri Journal', SK Live as well as other houses (Electronic,Digital and Print) for the persistent engagement in helping us reach out to the city. I was frankly in awe seeing the support we got from the Media houses, would be great to experience this kind of exposure and encouragement towards an art exhibition from the Media houses of the metropolitan cities and conventional spaces of art viewing so cheers to all of you…Last but definitely not the least my sincere gratitude towards all the artists who collaborated with me Aditya Basak Atin Basak Arindam Chatterjee Chandra Bhattacharjee Srikanta Paul Chhatrapati Dutta Jayashree Chakravarty for the continuous encouragement and positivity which drove me all along and made this endeavour possible. Looking forward to more such experiences and opportunities in the future!