Soumya Sankar Bose (India)

Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990) is an artist who reconstructs archival materials and oral histories through photography, film, alternative archives, and artist books. His practice combines long term research with close engagement with communities, including his own family history. Through layered narratives, Bose explores subaltern experiences and fragile memories in post Partition Bengal, focusing on lives that exist at the edges of official history yet endure with quiet resilience. He lives and works in Kolkata, India.

Bose was awarded the Magnum Foundation’s Social Justice Fellowship in 2017 for Full Moon on a Dark Night. In 2023, he was named Hello! India’s Emerging Artist of the Year and received the Louis Roederer Discovery Public Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles for A Discreet Exit Through Darkness. He served as Artistic Chair for the 2024 to 2025 period at The Beaux Arts Nantes Saint Nazaire, Le Lieu Unique, the City of Nantes, and the Institut d’études avancées in Nantes, France. His work has been supported by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (Amol Vadehra Art Grant), The Agroecology Fund, Murthy Nayak Foundation Photobook Grant, Henry Luce Foundation, The Kemmler Foundation, and the India Foundation for the Arts.

Bose’s prints are held in collections including Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Royal Ontario Museum, Ontario; Les Rencontres d’Arles, Arles; and Duncan Aviation, USA. His books are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Tate Modern, London; The Cleveland Museum of Art (Ingalls Library); Cincinnati Art Museum; Syracuse University (Bird Library); Stanford University Libraries; Tufts University (Tisch Library); and Peabody Essex Museum (Phillips Library).

Selected exhibitions include She, Who Dwells in the Shadows, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna (2026); Columna Rota / Broken Column, Museo de la Ciudad, Mexico City (2025); SOAS Gallery, University of London (2025); Le Lieu Unique, Nantes (2025); Braiding Dawn and Dusk, Delfina Art Foundation, London (2024); When Images Take Care, Centre de la photographie, Genève (2024); and A Discreet Exit Through Darkness, Les Rencontres d’Arles and Experimenter galleries in Mumbai and Kolkata (2023). His work has also been shown at Magazzino delle Idee, Trieste; Belfast Photo Festival; Photo Kathmandu; Houston Center for Photography; and Goethe Institut exhibitions including Five Million Incidents.