2019-2023

Windblown Leaves, Emerging Roots:

 A selected translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs and poetry by Avik Chatterjee with art by Sushmita Mazumdar 

My Language Self is a project I started in 2018 through which I keep an eye out for what we leave behind when we immigrate and try to create a new identity, and how what we lost resurfaces showing itself through our art and our words, inspired and encouraged by new places, people, and ideas. Through this I am exploring and documenting what we will allow ourselves to express, who enjoys it and who feels uncomfortable. #mylanguageself

Video, above: Windblown Leaves, Emerging Roots This Handmade Storybook project was imagined in 2019 by Avik and Sushmita. They decided to create a book from a selected translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs and poetry by Avik with art by Sushmita. Inspired by the translations, Avik's Windblown Leaves, Sushmita watches her Emerging Roots as she goes back to teaching herself how to write her first language, her mother tongue, Bengali, or Bangla.

Artist MaryLouise Marino has been documenting this project since the beginning as she has been mentor and guide to Sushmita with many aspects of expressive calligraphy. They often discuss why we express this way, what changes when we change our tools, and what we learn from marks we cannot read. Today she got to make this video as the project is complete. Now Sushmita starts production of the books.

Documenting It All

The first part of the project I call My Language Self was Lyrical Journeys. Here, I wrote the lyrics of Hindi movie songs I deeply connect with. I wrote in expressive ways on paper and canvas, using acrylics, Chinese ink, and collage to check if I even remember a script I haven’t written in decades. I wrote using brush, scraping, and even pebbles. It led to a collaboration with photographer Yuri Long called Lyrical Journey Luminous Play. 

This second part of the project I call Emerging Roots, and it’s a collaboration with Avik Chatterjee, who I met one afternoon at the Freer Gallery of Art, as I finished giving a tour. We chatted, both Bengalis from India now living in the US for many years. Avik told me how he had translated many of Tagore’s poems and songs into English while keeping intact their prosody or musicality. I was thrilled that he had searched for such a translation and not finding any had created his own! I asked to read them and as I read the English, I could tell which Bengali song it was. It made me want to re-learn how to write the beautiful Bengali script my mother had taught me to write when I was a child growing up in Bombay, India. So we decided to collaborate. Avik and I picked paintings of mine which connected with his poems and I created calligraphic artworks using the Bangla script.

“It is difficult to overstate the impact of the (largely self-taught) polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) on modern Indian (particularly Eastern Indian) and Bangladeshi cultural forms, norms, thought, and language. The poetry, operatic dramas, and songs (especially songs!) composed by Tagore created an ecosystem for expression in Bengali whose ubiquity is exceeded only by the marigold-garlanded portrait busts in his homeland. Cultural, seasonal, and folk events, social gatherings, school performances, indeed every ritual and celebration in the life of Bengal flows to his verses, many of which are widely known by heart. Today, his oeuvre is deeply ingrained in the subsoil of the Bengali psyche.” ~ Avik Chaterjee

At Studio PAUSE

We have created a display of the artworks, the paintings included in the book, and also the expressive calligraphy done for each page at Studio PAUSE in Arlington, VA. It will stay up for April, celebrating National Poetry Month 2023. You can see the photos in the video above.

“What a beautiful video; what a beautiful idea for a book; and what a beautiful collaboration. It's a lesson if there ever was one that art is not just the finished image (as if a true work of art were ever "finished"):  it's the process of getting there, too. You can see it in the way the calligraphic image just materializes out of song and what looks like a cinnamon stick and a bowl of ink. The hands that can pull such an image into Being in the material world are blessed and a blessing; bringing hope and comfort to a broken world.” - David Bearinger 

ZOOM LAUNCH, April 22, 2023: We had a virtual launch of the book to celebrate National Poetry Month 2023. You can watch the recoding here!

SOCIAL MEDIA: Below are some posts from my social media. Click on the links and check them out!

sRelearning to write Bangla for a new project. Chinese ink on cotton rag paper... #mylanguageself

Tools for the project: cinnamon stick. So if the mark-making doesn’t look good it’s not my fault!

Gosh, didn’t know I had a favorite Bengali letter to write! Maybe it’s connected to a funny childhood written riddle...

Orders

Windblown Leaves Emerging Roots hopes to share their joy with people who read English and Bangla, and live in the US or elsewhere.

Designed, printed and handmade by Sushmita in her Arlington, VA studio, a small edition of these books are available till stocks last. $50.00 ea.

Prints: You can also order prints of your favorite poem/song. Email me for details.