Dr. Paula Sengupta born in 1967 is an artist, academician, curator, researcher and a writer who works using diverse mediums and techniques including found objects, hand embroidery, chintz, muslin, woodblock, nakshi kantha and applique. Paula’s repertoire as an artist includes broadsheets, artist’s books, objects, installation-performance work, and community art projects. Her work occupies and explores the domestic space and the women constrained by patriarchy and typified gender roles. At the same time, it interrogates the impact and remains of colonial rule, often juxtaposing the Oriental with the Occidental. These themes are intimately connected with Dr Sengupta’s own past and family history as revealed through her use of text that serves both as historical record and poetic narration. This lends a personal and autobiographical character to her artwork, often centering on a desire to return to her family’s ancestral home in Bangladesh while simultaneously recording the experience of exile, enforced migration and resultant physical and psychological displacement that followed the Partition in 1947.

Paula Sengupta is also the 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.

Paula Sengupta’s artwork has been exhibited at Gallery Espace, New Delhi; Drik Gallery, Dhaka; Nehru Centre, London among others. She has also curated exhibitions in Kolkata and has participated in several residencies including at Britto Arts Trust, Dhaka and Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, California.

She has been a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust research grant. Currently, she is Assistant Professor in the Printmaking Department of the Visual Arts Faculty, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. She has been guest faculty at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Kolkata [1999-2003]. In addition to this, Dr. Sengupta is Secretary of the Khoj International Artist’s Association, Kolkata, an artist-led initiative dedicated to promoting alternative art practices.

The artist lives and works in Kolkata.