IITK Alumnus and self-taught Visual Artist, Anshul Roy (BT/BSBE/2020) talks about his inspiring journey from science to art, the challenges that came and the efforts he took to overcome those.
The Journey at IITK
My journey in IITK started in 2015 when I joined the Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Department. During high school, my parents and coaching teachers would tell me that after coming to IIT everything would work out and I wouldn’t need to study much. I think, I took that way too seriously. I had lost touch with my studies right from the first semester, and my CPI was 3.9 at the end of the first year. It was a terrible situation to be in, but on the better side, I started doing photography, which I didn't do before coming to IITK.
My seniors used to motivate us to join the photography club for very absurd, shallow reasons, but I was encouraged to join photography because I was fascinated by the idea of using the camera as a tool to see the world differently.
Once people start taking photographs, they start looking at sunsets more closely. They wait and observe flowers and start appreciating the profound beauty in our everyday life. I think photography is a visual art medium that completely changes the way you interact with the real world. One of my favourite quotes is by the French author Marcel Proust who said, "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Of all visual arts, photography is the one which teaches you this in the most concrete way.
I give a lot of credit to the Photography Club for fostering my interest in photography. I am still in touch with my coordinators (especially, Nishant Shukla, a Y14); on Teacher's day, I even wish them, because they were the ones who first planted that seed inside me. Another thing I love about IITK is its architecture. You cannot help but marvel at the different types of architecture that are present on the campus . My earlier photographic work was heavily inspired by this built environment and is one of the reasons why I still have a very geometric way of looking at the world. I also interned as an Architecture Photographer's assistant in NYC last year, and he also appreciated my eye for patterns and forms.This vision was totally cultivated during my 'photowalks' at IITK campus.
Hall 13 Geometry, 2020
I see photography as a continuous struggle against the world, that is always in flux. The world throws out aesthetic moments at you from time to time. It is your responsibility to stop and react to those moments. Photography is different from other visual arts in the sense that it does not start with a 'tabula rasa' (a blank canvas), and it is an act of selection (from a continuous flow of time) rather than an act of creation. Everyone thinks that it's easy to do photography just because it's easy to use a camera, but that is not true. It's like saying it's easy to be a good writer because it's easy to use a pen. These were the intriguing factors for me to get into photography. However, I pursued it just for fun in my first year.
Reach out your Hand, 2017
I did ruin my grades in the process, though. I still remember, during the MTH 101 end semester exam, I was done with my paper in 15 minutes, and when I went to submit it, the invigilator said that the exam was for three hours and I couldn't leave the room before 30 minutes. People used to fail and then they used to feel very bad about it, but I did not care. Looking back, I was very wrong. I should have worked hard, because when I was under Academic Probation, I could not do the things I wanted to with a free mind.
Along with photography, I also relentlessly pursued quizzing during my while at IITK, and won lots of national level quizzes for IITK. When I could not do the things I wanted to do, I realised the gravity of my situation and started to improve my academics from the 4th semester. I am pretty proud of the fact that I was able to graduate with a 6.6 CPI, even after studying the bare minimum.
PAVING A UNIQUE PATH
I observed that a lot of my peers and seniors fell into the same trap of running behind money, jobs and lucrative packages. I always used to think that as IITians, we are the cream of the nation and we should have a unique vision, but our aspirations were very similar to those of students from other mediocre colleges (it was just a difference of magnitude). A friend of mine and I always ridiculed that mentality. I think IIT provides a great safety net, and those who are privileged enough to take a risk should go for it. My simple litmus test for what I'd consider a suitable job for me is the 'Garfield' test. I have to be in a job where I don't 'hate Mondays', where I enjoy my work so much that I cannot believe that I'm getting paid for it.
Love in the Time of Corona, 2021
I have been very blessed to have supportive parents who let me do this. I remember, I had written a mail to my dad after my first year saying that I don't like this place, and I am in a bad situation. There is a rat race going on here and I don't want to be a part of it. So I wanted to drop out and try a humanities course instead. My father then gave me great advice. He said IIT is like a springboard, it's better to jump from a higher ground then from ground zero. He just told me to get my degree, apart from that I had complete freedom over what I wanted to do.
I completely agree I was pretty privileged to come from a financially stable background to pursue my true interests. Many of my batchmates didn't have this luxury and had to do a "real job". I totally get the point that for a majority of students, IITs are a way to get out of poverty and elevate their socio-economic status. However, it was disappointing to see that other students who didn’t belong to such disadvantaged backgrounds and also had a desire to do something else with their lives didn’t have the guts to take a risk just because they were afraid of failure and what the society would say of their decisions.
I feel that the phrase “Indian education system” is a misnomer, because we don’t have an education system in our country, what we do have is a glorified job training system, and the much hallowed places like IITs and IIMs are quite emblematic of this fact. I despised this instrumental approach towards education during my time at IITK, and felt sad that most students don't make use of what we get in IITs, which actually can provide us a lot of knowledge across a broad spectrum of fields.
Pink and Fragmented Legs, 2022
Unlike most of my batchmates, I did not have any structured guidance for my career. I did not have any senior who I could talk to about what I had to do in my career, because my path was very different. I had to figure it out all by myself. It was always clear to me that I had a very strong humanities bent. I understood that I wasn't into core engineering, so I tried to explore the other things which were offered in college, like Film Studies, Fine Arts, Cognitive Science. I also did a lot of self directed research in Art History and Critical Theory too. Luckily, I did find great professors in the fine arts department like Prof. Koumudi Patil and Prof. Ritwij Bhowmik, and doing courses offered by them were heavily influential to me.
For internships and other opportunities, I just had to shamelessly contact people and express my interest in the work being offered. I sent my portfolio to multiple people working in the photojournalism industry, which resulted in me being given a chance at The Hindu by Mr. V.V. Krishnan (who is an iconic sports photographer). I was very lucky to have been mentored by him and learnt a lot during my time there. Overall, I had to put in a lot of effort, but once I found good mentors, it started making sense and the path seemed clearer. Initially I had a dream of being a photojournalist or documentary photographer, but I eventually realised that unfortunately, it is not a stable career path.
During my stay at IITK, I also realised that there were professors in fine arts with very stable jobs. I also wondered if I had certain professor-like traits, such as maintaining a captivated audience. I really loved imparting knowledge to others, and wanted to be an academician all my life, since my father is a professor. Looking at Prof. Ritwij Bhowmik’s profile, I also found out about the degree called Master of Fine Arts. If you want to become an art historian, then you do a Master of Arts (MA) and then go for a PhD in it, but if you do an MFA, you become a practising artist and can teach at an Art/Design school. This made me seriously think about applying to graduate schools. During my final year, I did a UGP under Prof. Bhowmik and he helped me a lot in crafting my portfolio for Art school as I was a complete novice. Hand of Defiance (Roe v. Wade Protests, NYC), 2022
The Synergy between Art and Technology
When most people think of art, they have the image of Monalisa in their mind; a painting you put on a wall and gain some aesthetic pleasure. According to me, that’s not art but decoration. Contemporary Art has evolved a lot lately and there is so much intersection between STEM and Arts, such as in fields “Bio-Art” and “New Media Art” This one-dimensional way of looking at STEM and Arts is a very regressive thought process and stops the cross-pollination of ideas between these two fields. At IITK, I was highly influenced by reading C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” in which he talks about similar topics way back in the 1950s.
Hand of God (Fifth Avenue), 2022
IITs especially have a decent Humanities department, because they also teach us stem along with that . A lot of my art is inspired from what I have studied in college. This dichotomy between technology and art that society has created, does not really exist. One of my favorite Futurist painters Gino Severni said that - “One of the main causes of our artistic decline lies beyond doubt in the separation of art and science,” and I totally agree with this. I believe that having a basic exposure to mathematical rigour and the scientific method makes you a better artist.
I have found the most inspiring artists at IITK, rather than outside. The way of approaching problems is different. I am also looking to collaborate with some of my IITK friends in artistic projects related to computer vision and ML. This just shows how IITs are arguably the best institutes for pursuing any kind of academic program, not just engineering.
Hair Strand with Glycerol (Brightfield Microscopy), 2021
In spite of not enjoying my time very much in IITK when I was there, in retrospect I think it was a great decision. STEM education is always beneficial, no matter what you want to pursue later, because it gives you logical rigour and a way to think about the world in a rational way. Most of the intellectual malarkey that is plaguing the Arts and Humanities academia lately is just because the scholars in these fields have no exposure to this way of thinking.
Hands (Real and Fake), 2022.
LIFE AS A POST-CONCEPTUAL ARTIST
Since the last one year, I have stopped doing photography for my professional art practice, as I am trying to rebrand myself as a Post-Conceptual artist. For me a good work of art is something that’s interesting to think about, rather than something that’s interesting to look at, and hence the paradigm of ‘Artist as a Visual Philosopher’ is what appeals to me the most right now. There is a distinction between retinal and cerebral artI am more into cerebral art, where it is about ideas more than aesthetic beauty. I am heavily inspired by this quote by Lewis Baltz - “Photography as such is not necessarily interesting, it's interesting as an art medium when it can intersect with other social and aesthetic questions." My current artistic practice is highly “research-based” and is inspired by Post-Colonial discourses, exploring issues like identity, historical memory and cultural representation, with a specific interest in probing how Britishers employed photography in colonial India for "othering" and how these ethnographic photos exist in contemporary institutional archives. This paradigm shift in my thoughts is entirely based on what I was taught by Prof. Koumudi Patil in the Modern Art course at IITK, which also shows how things taught in undergrad are helping me out even now. I am also interested in things like Post-Internet, New Media, Performance Art and Institutional Critique, that I incorporate in my current practice. I recently participated in my first exhibition in a downtown Manhattan gallery and will also be presenting my work at Society of Photographic Education’s 61st Annual Conference next year in St. Louis, Missouri and in The Photographer’s Gallery in London. I am hopeful of gaining more traction in the contemporary art world with my current work.
Live performance from the series ‘Rage Against the Archive’
MESSAGE TO STUDENTS
There are a few pieces of general advice I would give all my juniors. Maintain a bare minimum for CPI, so that you can pursue what you want without hindrance. Question preconceived notions and reject authority. This is the first time in your life you have the opportunity to think for yourself and actually figure out what kind of life you want to live. And then, with the time and freedom you have, find your interests. Invest in them. And don't be afraid to pursue it. I believe that money and everything is taken care of if you enjoy your work so much that you can't believe you're getting paid for it.
Smombie with Geometry, 2022,
CHECK OUT HIS WORK
https://linktr.ee/riyask22
