Critical Collective (CC): Your participation in the Santiniketan leg of the debut edition of the Bengal Biennale represents a return to roots in many ways. A return to your alma mater (Kala Bhavan), and with a project that re-engages the campus town’s connections with the Santal villages, which have been an older part of the Birbhum landscape. Over the years, what kind of interactions have you seen between these different worlds that make up Santiniketan?
Mithu Sen (MS): When I returned to Santiniketan this time, I noticed new developments -- higher walls around homes and buildings, improved sanitation, concrete roads replacing muddy lanes. Some of these changes felt superficial, even though the essence of the place has remained as dreamlike as it was when I was a student here. What has also persisted is the stark divide between life in the elite university campus and the Santal villages all around. Despite some progress, there is the sense of a dominant culture silently overshadowing the Santal community.
Bengali continues to overpower Ol Chiki, the indigenous language of the Santals, rather than supporting its preservation. There is also a deep-seated class and caste hierarchy, along with economic disparities and political exclusion, that has not changed over the last many years. While artists like Ramkinkar Baij and Somnath Hore sought to bridge some of these gaps, collective efforts to address these historic and systemic disparities have been minimal. In more recent times, symbolic gestures, like the commodification of the Sonajhuri Haat, continue to highlight unresolved tensions rather than addressing them meaningfully.
CC: Your practice has often dealt with the subject of language, challenging existing hierarchies and conventions. In what way does the Ol Chiki project take forward your interest in this field? Your performances with language have also largely been within the domain of the personal. What are the changes that come in when they reflect on a larger community?
MS: Radical hospitality forms the foundation of my practice, where I challenge linguistic formats and politics through performative methods. Dominant linguistic hierarchies impose a sense of colonization, inferiority and suppression, eroding self-confidence through power dynamics and a lack of empathy. Having experienced these first-hand, I view deconstructing dominant language constructs as an act of resistance. My practice begins by creating spaces for interdisciplinary collaboration, often adopting misunderstood voices to transcend linguistic divides. Through these methods, I aim to amplify marginalized groups and confront cultural complexities.
These explorations are evident in older projects such as No Star, No Land, No Word, No Commitment (2004), I am a Poet (2013), Aphasia (2016), How to Be a SUCKcessful Artist (2019), Be Beyond, Being (2021), and mOTHERTONGUE (2023). As a self-proclaimed lingual anarchist, I delve into themes of identity and cultural loss using radical glossolalia, glitch poetry, and disorienting auditory experiences. These methods highlight the power of miscomprehension, and reimagine how we can engage with language, by subverting traditional linguistic norms.
In I Have Only One Language (2014), created for the Kochi Biennale, I worked with Malayali-speaking girls in an orphanage, embodying the para-fictional character, Mago. Without a shared language, we created a dialogue through instinctual empathy and playful interaction, addressing the emotional and social violence they endured. This collaboration challenged conventional notions of domesticity and relationships, fostering a transcendent understanding that defied linguistic boundaries.
The Ol Chiki project also seeks to change the linguistic dominance of the Santali language (which was oral for the longest time and gained a written script through Raghunath Murumu as late as 1925). As a Bengali-speaking artist navigating a postcolonial world where English dominates and my own mother tongue feels transient, I resonate deeply with the Santal spirit -- resilient yet constrained. Through “unlanguaging,” I imagine a shift where Bengali, the cultural colonizer in Santiniketan, can yield to Santali, advocating for linguistic and cultural equity.
CC: How did you choose Sanyasi Lohar as your collaborator on this project, and what were the skills required of him? How does this experience relate to other kinds of collaborative projects you have undertaken?
MS: If I am working within a specific geographical landscape, engaging with the local community (both physically and emotionally) is essential to my practice. The Ol Chiki project centres on Santal identity and spaces. I see myself merely as a tool to help the community realize this vision for the Biennale. My intention was to move beyond conventional art venues and create art that is inseparable from the Santali landscape of Santiniketan landscape.
During the research phase, I wanted to meet local artists from the community to discuss the technical aspects of the project. Sanyasi Lohar, a talented artist from Kala Bhavan and a resident of the Santal village of Bishnubati, became a cornerstone for this collaboration. An expert in low-relief murals, Sanyasi was also well-acquainted with the villagers at the site we chose (Pearson Palli). He brought in village women like Mungli and Lakshmi, who traditionally create other kinds of ritual wall decorations as a part of household events and community festivals.
We painted murals across the outside walls of a group of homes in Pearson Palli, which featured the distinctive letters and patterns of the Ol Chiki script to craft a culturally resonant artwork. As someone unfamiliar with the methods and materials, I relied entirely on Sanyasi’s knowledge and skills. We used pigments from naturally available resources: earth and clay for the reds and browns, turmeric and flowers for the yellows, burnt straw ash and charcoal for the blacks, and chalk and lime for the whites. Cow dung, resin and gum were the binders. From preparing mud walls and organic colours, to layering the walls to protect the surfaces from dampness and readying them for painting, Sanyasi made it all possible. He also ensured there was a friendly relationship with the residents while we were working on site.
Another vital collaborator was Bodi Baske from the Santali Department at Visva-Bharati, who guided my understanding of the Ol Chiki script and refined the project. Bodi also helped connect the QR codes we created within the murals to the Santali Ol Chiki Wikipedia page.
Additionally, we published a small book, titled I am Ol Chiki, resembling Borno Porichoy (a Bengali primer written by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar). This introduces the Santali alphabet and numbers to foster cultural literacy. Easily circulated among schools andhouseholds, it can become a symbol of the community. These different aspects helped me envision I Am Ol Chiki as a collaborative effort that bridges art, culture and community life, and can flourish even beyond the Biennale.
CC: The villagers of Pearson Palli were also active participants in this project. How did you win over their trust and interest? In what ways can this project be taken forward by the villagers?
MS: The process of wall painting was met with great curiosity and enthusiasm by the villagers. The realization that the mural celebrated their language filled them with pride. It was heart-warming to see children reading out the letters to adults and their peers, like a free classroom open to the sky, creating a moment of shared learning and connection. The community also made me feel very much at home through their incredible generosity and warm hospitality. It reminded me of my school days, when I used to visit this village, and felt deeply connected to their way of life and culture.
I am not sure about the long-term impact of the project. But while I was there, I made the young girls promise that they would create words from the Ol Chiki letters. In my dreams, I hope these words will grow into poems, which can be written over the false promises that political graffiti litters across village walls. Even if only a few walls carry these verses, it will be a small step towards something meaningful.
CC: In what ways have you brought technology into the project? Is there hope for rejuvenating traditional pictorial languages via new kinds of symbols, such as emojis and codes, that digital interfaces have popularized?
MS: My vision extends beyond tradition into the digital, where Ol Chiki finds new life through cyber collaborations. By merging legacy with innovation, the script seamlessly navigates physical and virtual spaces, preserving culture across time.
To make the Ol Chiki letters in the murals and book even more interesting for a younger generation that has got used to the pictorial language of the internet and social media, I have incorporated emojis and QR codes. These bring in a fresh dimension to linguistic revival. Moreover, scannable elements leverage the brain’s pattern-recognition ability, making the work accessible even to those unfamiliar with traditional scripts. Interactive features invite visitors to engage, unlocking deeper meanings and fostering digital inclusivity, bridging gaps in literacy and making the work universally approachable.
This digital ecosystem allows the script to circulate in unexpected ways, challenging conventions and enriching a shared global consciousness. Through experiments in codes and ciphers, I reimagine communication and dissolve traditional poetic structures, creating a collective, ever-evolving vernacular vocabulary. This counter palette complements my mainstream practice, reaching diverse audiences and sparking ideas through algorithmic anarchy. As an artistic researcher within the cyber feminist movement, I seek to contribute to an ethically mindful digital landscape, fostering a more responsive collective psyche.
CC. As someone who has had adequate exposure to the local, national and international art worlds, what do you think a model like the Biennale can bring to a space like Santiniketan? More importantly, how will Santiniketan be affected by this exposure to a larger artistic community and viewership?
MS: Santiniketan already carries a long legacy of hosting great international scholars and visitors, and nurturing an educational system closely associated with nature, creativity and culture. However, it also grapples with stagnation and with gaps -- between the past and the present, the indigenous and the elite. These cracks are part of its reality, but artistic endeavours, when guided by ethical goals and empathy, have the power to bridge them. A biennale can amplify Santiniketan’s essence, fostering dialogue between diverse contemporary voices and highlighting human equity through the merging of differences. It can also offer a national and international platform to present regional traditions, indigenous cultures and marginalized voices, while exposing the community to global art and new sources of inspiration.