03 Feb “PK Sen is back”

A site-responsive performance by Aditi Bhattad during the 5th episode of Uronto Residential Art Exchange Program in Chottogram, BD.

Aditi is a skilled and passionate performance artist from India. When she participated in the programme she went through a layer of experience while exploring the history about the P K Sen building and the previous family members since the house is owned by new owners.
She developed a small performance collaborated with the family members of present owner , who are known as Ghosh family. Her performance was title: “PK Sen is back”, which is a performance showing the intriguing stories woven around the heritage and questions the constant conflict on the ownership of the property. This conflict also further states the complex human relationships with the structures, properties and culture we built around ourselves. Aditi spiced up the performance by putting posters all over the city just the day before of the performance taking place, and the posters was saying that P K Sen is back, a mysterious dialogue for the present social curiosity. Artist wanted to have the reactions as a part of her performance.

The performance took place within the house on the open studio day and she pretending one of the real/fake P K sen was seen enjoying other works done by other participating artist too. It was like performing the message from the poster and having P K Sen back in the house. She was followed by few more P K Sen appearing as part of her performance and at the end keeping all the fake or real P K Sen, the present owner stand ahead to reflect the contemporary hierarchy or control over the valuable property.

Aditi collaborated with the family members of the building and fellow artists in her performance.

Aditi Bhattad is a performance artist but her actions are not limited to performance only. She experiments with other disciplines but her body itself plays a major role in all of her work merged into other context which she discusses in her work.