The-Forest-of-Folly-Paula-Sengupta

Paula Sengupta

Paula Sengupta

Dr. Paula Sengupta is an artist-pedagogue, art writer and curator resident in Kolkata. She graduated in Painting from the College of Art, New Delhi, followed by an MFA and PhD in Printmaking from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. She is currently Professor and Head of the Department of Graphics-Printmaking, and former Dean of the Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. She taught as Guest Faculty at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Kolkata from 1999-2003. She served as Member of the Board of Governors at the Indian Institute of Management, Shillong from 2017-25; Member of the Governing Body, Indian College of Art & Draughtsmanship, Kolkata in 2025; and is currently Member of the Advisory Board, Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata and Member of the Board of Trustees, India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru.

Paula has been the recipient of the UGC Research Fellowship for doctoral studies (1993-98), the Artist-In-Residence Fellowship at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California (1997-98), Guest Artist at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Stuttgart under the INDART Artist Exchange Programme (2000), CWIT Research Grant & British Council, Kolkata Grant for independent research in the UK (2007), Artist-in-Residence at the Britto Arts Trust, Dhaka (2008), and the Devi Award 2026 from the New Indian Express Group.

Trained as a printmaker, Paula’s repertoire as an artist includes broadsheets, artist’s books, objects, installation, animation, and community art projects. She works across mediums that include printmaking, textiles and embroidery, papermaking, drawing, moving image, and much else. Paula’s work addresses gender binaries, enforced migration, loss of home, heritage and environment, and a concern for conservation of societies, communities and ecologies. Her language is distinctly feminine, therefore laying claim to methods and materials that underline feminist thought.

Paula Sengupta is author of The Printed Picture: Four Centuries of Indian Printmaking published by DAG, New Delhi and Foreign & Indigenous Influences in Indian Printmaking with LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken, Germany. She has also contributed to numerous publications for almost three decades now. 

Her curatorial projects include PURVAI: Printmaking in Eastern India – Pedagogy to Practice for Emami Art, Kolkata 2026; Living a Dark Night for The Kala Chaupal Trust, Gurgaon 2021-23; a soul (un)gendered: Anupam Sud – A Retrospective for DAG MODERN & KNMA, Delhi in 2019-20; Ghare Baire at the Old Currency Building, Kolkata for DAG MODERN and the Archaeological Survey of India in 2019; Popular Prints and the Freedom Struggle at the Drishyakala Museum, Red Fort, Delhi for DAG MODERN and the Archaeological Survey of India in 2019; the landmark exhibition Trajectories: 19th-21st Century Printmaking from India and Pakistan for the Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE in 2014; and six editions of The Printed Picture: Four Centuries of Indian Printmaking for DAG MODERN, India  from 2012-18.

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