Urbanscape: Paresh Maity's Giant Bronze Jackfruit Sculpture Is An Exercise In Absurdism

At the heart of Kolkata, the imposing 118-year-old Victoria Memorial Hall rests on the surface of the city like an ornament — its bright, white marble exterior shimmering in the sun like a pearl. Visit the colonial-era monument this December, however, and you'll see... a giant bronze jackfruit?

Cast in solid bronze, the massive 7000-kg jackfruit is, in fact, artist Paresh Maity's contribution to the inaugural edition of Bengal Biennale — an international art and design festival taking place across several venues in Santiniketan and Kolkata until January 5, 2025.

The sculpture, titled 'Urbanscape', resembles a massive jackfruit — a summer-time staple in Bengal cooked as a vegetable when raw and unripe, and consumed as a fruit when ripe and tender. Maity uses this ubiquitous, quotidian item as an idiomatic expression to comment on the duality of city-life — its seemingly inaccessible and defensive urban exterior, and the close-knit community that lies hidden under the hard, spinous surface. The sculpture's spiked exterior mirrors the cramped, jostling structures of metropolitan life, where human habitation is reduced to tight proximity.

Here, Maity plays with the irony embedded in the Bengali proverb 'Gacche kathal, Gofe tel' — an expectation of comfort prematurely savoured, as if city life promises more than it delivers. The spikes hint at anticipation, only to reveal the prickly reality of urban existence. Maity's sculpture critiques this suspended promise of the metropolis, transforming the fruit into a symbol of both allure and disillusionment. It's just the sort of whimsical, absurdist commentary you'd expect from Maity, who has been a mainstay in India's art scene since the Eighties.

Once known for his watercolours and mixed media paintings in oil and acrylic, Maity's practice has taken a more sculptural turn in recent years. The Padma Shri painter-sculptor has previously experimented with diverse materials like fibreglass and brass in his sculptures, and this larger-than-life bronze-work represents the most recent evolution in his decades-spanning career defined by continuous re-invention.

"The sculpture I have made is inspired by my childhood and city life. During my childhood days, my mom used to cook jackfruits, which are in abundance in my native place. I was mesmerised to see how delicately the seeds are positioned in the fruit that is covered by spikes. I was inspired by the structure of the fruit as it depicts a life in the city," Maity said in an interview to India Today in 2022.

'Urbanscape' by Paresh Maity is on view at the Victoria Memorial Hall as part of the Bengal Biennale until January 5, 2025.

Learn more about the sculpture here.

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