BIO
Ishita Chakraborty (b. 1989, West Bengal, India) is an artist and poet living and working between Switzerland and India. She is represented by Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich/Paris, and Gallery Espace, New Delhi.
Chakraborty’s artistic practice moves across drawing, installation, sculpture, sound, poetry, and socially engaged research. She examines how our existential questions of human life morph into ecological ones. Her work investigates the afterlives of colonialism, migration, postcolonial ecologies, gendered labour, and microhistories. Her methodology can be understood as an ecofeminist methodology of repair: refusing to treat ecology, economy, gender, and colonial history as separate subjects. It investigates strategies and discourses of resistance narrated by individuals—often those who are marginalized or rendered subaltern.
She received an MFA from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2021 and an MFA from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, in 2013. Alongside her artistic practice, Chakraborty has worked across pedagogical and curatorial contexts. From 2016 to 2018, she taught Fine Arts as an Assistant Professor at Amity University, Kolkata, and in 2024 she was co-curator of Apropos Hodler at Kunsthaus Zürich.
Her recent and upcoming solo and group exhibitions include Inheritors of Earth, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi, India (2026); Tell Me Where Home Is, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2026–27); East Is Everywhere, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Paris, France (2026); the Manor Kunstpreis solo exhibition, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2025); I Recall the Forest Inside Me, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland (2025); Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, Museo Vincenzo Vela, Ligornetto, Switzerland (2025); Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany (2025); The River Flows in Our Veins, ART FLOW Public Art Project, Turgi, Switzerland, curated by Christoph Doswald (2025); and Imperial Silhouettes: Shadows of Sovereignty, RIZQ Art Initiative, Abu Dhabi, UAE, curated by Premjish Achari (2025). Recent exhibitions also include Apropos Hodler, Kunsthaus Zürich (2024); Reimagining The Waste Land, Art Heritage, New Delhi (2024); Seeds and Souls, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, curated by Christine Eyene (2023); Stranger in the Village, Aargauer Kunsthaus (2023); Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa (2023); LifeLines, Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich (2021); and solo exhibitions at Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2023), VITRINE, Basel (2023), Prameya Art Foundation, New Delhi (2020), and Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau (2017).
She has received numerous awards and grants, including the Manor Art Prize Aargau (2024), a Prix Mobilière 2024 nomination by Prof. Dr. Peter J. Schneemann, University of Bern, the Pro Helvetia Co-Creation Grant, South America (2025), a Work Grant from the Aargauer Kuratorium (2024), the Credit Suisse Förderpreis (2021), a Research Grant from the Aargauer Kuratorium (2021), a Pro Helvetia Pop Up Grant (2021), and the ZHdK–Avina Foundation Grant (2020). She was also a Visiting Artist Fellow at Harvard University’s Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute (2020–21) and received the jury award at Auswahl 21, Aargauer Kunsthaus.
Chakraborty was awarded a Pro Helvetia residency in the Brazilian Amazon and a Co-Creation Grant (2024-25), following residencies at Gästeatelier Krone, Aarau (2017) and the Piramal Museum of Art, Mumbai (2016). She has presented artist talks and public conversations at WE ARE AIA, Löwenbräu Zürich (2022–23), Aargauer Kunsthaus (2021), KHOJ, New Delhi (2018), Dock Basel (2017), Rajya Charukala Parishad, Kolkata (2017), and Forum Schlossplatz, Aarau (2017).