Eleena Banik’s works speak out from the depths of truth. She is a painter and a sculptor striving to make a difference, articulating what she’d like to describe as her “deep existential dilemma” in a way that is unique. Her expressionistic style, individuality and originality have a lot to do with her background. Her talents were nurtured at the aesthetic and ideological environs of Santiniketan, her alma mater from where she completed her MFA in 1997. And now they are here to flourish, just as a painter’s brush ought to.
In her latest exhibition at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre titled ‘My voice against violence as a woman’, Banik captures a world shaped by the vagaries of human inconsistency and somnolence. Most of her works are thread together by personal experiences of trauma and terror. Those experiences go back a long way when one day in 1994 Banik had to rush home to Kolkata from Santiniketan to the horrific news that her father had been stabbed. His assailants were unknown, but the trauma of seeing her father in hospital has not been forgotten. Terror brutalizes her inner being, and she was once again affected when present in Mumbai during 26/11.
Thus far she has more than twenty five solo shows within the country and abroad and has participated in several group exposures around the world.
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