Arijit Bhattacharyya: A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies

When

6.12.2025 – 18.1.2026
Fr-Sun 12-7pm
Opening: Saturday, 6.12. at 7pm

Where

Künstlerhof Frohnau hosted by Berlin Program for Artistic Research:

Uferstraße 13, 13357 Berlin

Support 

The exhibition is realized through the Basisförderung für Projekträume und -initiativen of the Berlin Cultural Senate 2024-2025.

About the exhibition

Arijit Bhattacharya’s new chapter in his ongoing “novel” A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies is grounded in his firm belief in a political and social entanglement of Gaia’s terra magic and a transreligious, divine poetic justice that operates across multiple levels of time, space, and dimension. Building on the work of journalist and activist Amtus Stanislaus Kuyili, who documents the imprisonment of people on whose bodies plants have grown, the artist proposes to further connect human and more-than-human networks of solidarity above and below ground in a magic-realist intervention, at a moment when the moral and physical collapse of our current system of life has become almost unbearable.

Arijit’s artistic grounding in the Baroda School, his inspiration from the magic of Saeed Mirza’s social realist cinema, and his commitment to journalistic research come together in this special first iteration, generously hosted by the Berlin Program for Artistic Research on behalf of Künstlerhof Frohnau. Paintings of mutated dissident plant bodies or dissident bodies under the care of the herbal dimension, along with a contribution shot on analog film depicting the police interrogation of trade unionist Tarulata Ghosh and her friends, who are overwhelmed after tuberose begins to grow on their bodies, are accompanied by journalistic reports on struggles for earthly justice from Germany, India, Palestine, and beyond.

A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies opens on December 6 and bridges the anniversaries of the destruction of the historic Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, the death of the revolutionary figure Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, author of India’s secular constitution, and the death of Amadeo Antonio, an Angolan guest worker. India’s current Hindu-nationalist Modi regime becomes part of the broader separatist and extremist right-wing picture of our world. Arijit’s transdisciplinary, expanded artistic practice aims to move beyond a one-handed linear narrative and turn toward a wide-open horizon. From this long-term perspective emerges his artistic and humanist concern with understanding how the collective can simultaneously produce deep traditions of resistance and dark nightmares of fascism.

Övül Ö. Durmusoglu

Credits

A project by Künstlerhof Frohnau, with contributions by Rimil Umul Collective, Shubhangi Derhgawen, Faheem Hemboum, Amtus Stanislaus Kuyil, and Jad Salfiti. Curated by Övül Ö. Durmusoglu.

A Handful of Truths in a Mouthful of Lies presents murals, paintings, drawings, video, and a newly produced publication created within the framework of Arijit Bhattacharyya’s artist residency at Künstlerhof Frohnau. The residency and the publication are part of the Ruckhaberle Award, which was granted to the artist in 2024 in cooperation with the Berlin-Reinickendorf Municipality.

The exhibition was developed in collaboration with Pedro Jośe D’Agosto, Samriddhi Banerjee, Joachim Bartsch, Kaya Behkalam, Nilanjan Bhattacharya, Swagata Bhattacharyya, Suparna Bhattacharjee, Belia Zanna Geetha Brückner, Achyut Kumar Chatterjee, Zuriñe Mariño Ciruelo, Soma Dasgupta, Santanu Dey, Rike Frank, Soumik Ghosh, Timo Grimberg, Moritz Grünke, Shibayan Halder, Mina Mohseni, Ratul Nandi, Narendran Nair, Bipul Roy, Sasanka Roohdar, and Prateek Vijan.

Exhibition photographs: Silke Briel