Portland Press Herald: How these up-and-coming Maine artists helped a curator learn about his new home

Sayantan Mukhopadhyay, who moved to Maine last year to take a job at the Portland Museum of Art, got to know the state through the process of curating 'As We Are,' on view all winter.

October 18, 2024
By Megan Gray

Originally published in the Portland Press Herald, read it here.

Related story: Meet the 14 emerging Maine artists in the Portland Museum of Art’s ‘As We Are’

When Sayantan Mukhopadhyay started his job as an assistant curator at the Portland Museum of Art last summer, his first task was to organize an exhibition of contemporary artists in Maine. It was a daunting task for someone who had set foot in the state only a couple times before and knew little of its artistic legacy.

His tour guides? The artists themselves.

“I got to learn about the art scene here through the studio visits,” Mukhopadhyay said. “What a wonderful way to learn about your new home.”

Now, the Maine he met is on exhibition in “As We Are” at the Portland Museum of Art. The show features the work of 14 emerging artists with connections to the state and each other. None have exhibited at the museum before, so it is their debut as much as it is the curator’s.

The work ranges widely across medium and subject, and the artists themselves have diverse experiences and backgrounds. But Mukhopadhyay noticed that each person he met wanted to tell him about others they admired. Every studio visit and gallery opening and coffee meeting led to another. So the strongest thread in the exhibition is the one that links the artists across overlapping residencies and shared mentors, mutual acquaintances and friendships. It reflects the sense of community Mukhopadhyay felt as he worked on the show.

“There can be such mutual support that can make for a robust and multivalent scene,” Mukhopadhyay said. “Like, look what happens when you’re not competitive and trying to cut each other down, when you’re just trying to lift each other up.”

MAKING A CONNECTION

Mukhopadhyay, 34, spent his childhood between Kuwait, Kolkata and Montreal. He has lived and worked in New York, Shanghai, New Delhi and Los Angeles. He earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in art history from UCLA.

He was looking for a job when he heard from Ramey Mize about an opening at the Portland Museum of Art. She works there as the assistant curator of American art, and they had met at a seminar on curatorial leadership. (“Anything that Ramey puts her seal of approval on, I will follow suit,” Mukhopadhyay said.) He started his job in June 2023.

Chief curator Shalini Le Gall said she saw in Mukhopadhyay “a deep respect and sincere appreciation” for contemporary artists.

“His experience brings a fresh perspective to our arts scene and also allows us to situate Maine’s artistic landscape within larger global contexts,” she said.

Mukhopadhyay started exploring the state’s many residency programs and galleries. He visited artists in their studios and then visited all the people those artists mentioned. “As We Are” tells the story of a small world inside a big state. The artists on view might have been classmates at Maine College of Art & Design or Bowdoin College. They have shared exhibition and studio space. Others overlapped at residency programs such as Hewnoaks in Lovell.

Jenny McGee is the associate director of artists at work and alumni relations at MECA&D. She expects students who view the show to feel very connected to the work and also see a community for themselves in Maine.

“Young people would graduate and leave,” said McGee, who graduated from the art school in 2005 and lived in California for a time before she returned to Maine. “Now, in the time that I’ve been back, I’ve watched people stay. Maine has such a beautiful tradition of artists coming here and being inspired, but the younger generation hasn’t felt in the past that connected to that spirit, but now it’s very clear to me in this show that’s not the case anymore. I can see so much of the landscape and so much of the connection to place in almost all of the work.”

NEW PATHWAYS

The gallery walls have been painted in bold colors – dreamy lilac on one wall, fresh green on another. As Mukhopadhyay walked through the exhibition on its opening day, he talked about the artists not only as professionals but also as new friends.

He and painter Jay Stern have talked about the gay culture of big cities. Lately, Mukhopadhyay said Stern has been documenting scenes from the life he has built with his partner in a quiet rural community. Those scenes have in turn informed Mukhopadhyay as he settles into a state more rural than any place he has ever lived.

“That is as valid a way of living and celebrating queer life,” Mukhopadhyay said. “That’s what works for them. Not everyone has to live in new York City or L.A. Not everyone even has to live in Portland if they’re queer. There’s like a hegemony of queer urban experience. I’ve been thinking about that a lot as someone who has otherwise been a gay, cis man of urban experience, and acclimating to life here. He’s offering me new pathways of understanding my own life.”

He lingered by the work by Portland artist Rachel Gloria Adams, who painted tender scenes of the Black women and girls in her family on handsewn quilts. He noted the way Hector Nevarez Magaña, a Mexican-American photographer who also moved from California to Maine, is exploring the religious culture of New England in his work.

“With a lot of artists of color in this show, I’m learning a lot about that very particular experience in what is statistically the whitest state in America,” Mukhopadhyay said. “I feel less alone when I talk to these artists. That’s been a very affirming experience. For us to share in our experiences of racialized subjectivity here, that’s been very powerful and empowering for me.”

‘BREADTH AND DEPTH’

Many curators in Maine have a background in American art. Mukhopadhyay did his dissertation on contemporary art in India. He came to the role without much experience of Maine itself – and, therefore, without many clichés about the state.

“I didn’t know there were all these stereotypes to battle,” he said. “It was very freeing, in a way. I was on the job, as I was learning about the ways that these tropes were being subverted that there were tropes to begin with. I didn’t come with that knowledge or that baggage.”

What Mukhopadhyay learned and what he hopes visitors do too is that contemporary artists in Maine are subverting and challenging those stereotypes all the time. The land and the ocean are enduring themes in Maine art, but the artists in this show are contemplating them in new ways. Maya Tihtiyas Attean is a Wabanaki photographer who focuses her work on the land and the enduring scars of colonization. Brian Smith made textured sculptures inspired not only by climate change, but also by queerness and mythology.

“I’m realizing through these studio visits that these topographical factors are so embedded in the way people look and see and understand their place here, but I wanted to show that they’re anything but flat,” Mukhopadhyay said. “They’re deeply political. They’re deeply, deeply complex. So when we think of landscape, for example, it’s not just this bucolic pastoral scene.”

Devon Zimmerman is the associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. He said the mythology of the state is being reconsidered and rethought by the artists in “As We Are.”

“It is far reaching, diverse, broad and multifaceted,” Zimmerman said. “What is going to be eye-opening to people is the breadth and depth of creative engagement going on by a really broad and diverse group of artists. That’s the triumph of the show. It really surveys how rich and vibrant the arts are in the state right now.”

The show is open all winter, but Mukhopadhyay said his studio visits with artists won’t be ending just because the work is on view.

” ‘As We Are’ is really a mark of a process that’s ongoing for myself as I’m becoming more and more at home here,” he said. “I’m just interested in getting to know this place even more.”