An exhibition called “Stampone – Banerjee and The Third Meaning” has been opened at the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi. The project, created by curators Eugenio Viola and Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, is an opportunity for dialogue between two artists, two curators and between two different methods, more generally consolidating cultural exchanges between Italy and India. Italy’s Giuseppe Stampone and Indian graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee have very different backgrounds, but they have found common ground in their work. They both use drawings to investigate the contradictions and anxieties of contemporary life in a figurative, often controversial way, usually tempered by irony. A site-specific project made by Mr Stampone during his stay in India is part of the Architecture of Intelligence (2015) series.
The exhibition “Stampone – Banerjee and The Third Meaning” is curated by Eugenio Viola and Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi
It is an ‘archive of an experience’ in which he stages an inter-generational dialogue with another artist: after Ugo La Pietra in France, in this case his dialogue is with Italian artist Stefano Arienti and his reflections on living. Throughout Mr Banerjee’s research, his recourse to apparently innocent cartoon drawings in his graphic novels have become an expedient to capture history, mythology and popular culture in India and an acrid instrument, somewhere between an autobiography and journalistic reporting, often focused on current events and incidents involving contemporary India.
His most recent project, “All Quiet in Vikaspur”, is a sort of Homeric saga telling the story of a journey to the centre of the earth by a man in search of the mythical Saraswati River. The book is a fictional account of the water wars of Delhi, in which he tackles the issue of a society obsessed with growth and corporate greed. For the first time in an exhibition are the original drawings for the book, which are displayed installations for the occasion. Music was provided at the opening by the Musica Extemporary Trio, with Marcello Allulli, Gianni Denitto and Matteo Fraboni.
