Poulomi Basu Exhibition Wins Award

For two years, Autograph has been working with artist Poulomi Basu on a major new exhibition, the international debut of her powerful photographic series Centralia. This decade-long project exposes hidden crimes of war deep within the forests of central India, where an under reported conflict between indigenous tribal people and the government slowly simmers.

Curated by Bindi Vora at Autograph, the exhibition was due to be presented as part of the Rencontres d’Arles festival, however has been delayed until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the meantime, we are proud to announce that Centralia has jointly won first place for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award Jury Prize, which will see works from the series accessioned into the Rencontres d’Arles collection of photography. The jury consisted of Damarice Amao (Curator, The Centre Pompidou), Quentin Bajac (Director, Jeu du Paume), Emilie Villez (Director, Kadist Foundation), Christoph Wiesner (Director, Les Rencontres d’Arles) and Marie-Ann Yemsi (Curator). The Award recognises the galleries, arts centers, artist-run spaces, independent venues and institutions that are often the first to support emerging artists. In this exceptional year, the ten shortlisted artists have divided the €15,000 endowment in solidarity.

With our partners New Art Exchange, Autograph put forward Centralia for the Award in December 2019 – an important project we believe deserves to be seen by an international audience. We are delighted that the jury agreed, and many congratulations to Basu for this recognition of her work.

This isn’t the only award Basu has picked up: she was the recipient of this year's Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal, the book of Centralia won Best Photobook at the Singapore International Photography Festival, and she has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021. If you’d like to know more about Basu, her activism and her practice, our recent long read interview with the artist is a good place to start.