Anshul Roy (b. 1997) is a visual artist from Ahmedabad, India, pursuing his MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. His artistic practice is anchored on a critical paradigm related to Post-Colonial discourses, exploring issues like identity and cultural representation, with a specific interest in probing how photography was employed for ‘othering’ during the British Raj in India and how these ethnographic photos exist in our contemporary institutional archives.

We asked Anshul about his art, creative process, and inspirations.

*From Rage Against the Archive Performance, 2023 by Anshul Roy*

Tell us about yourself and your background

I am a 25-year-old visual artist currently based in Syracuse, NY. I grew up in the beautiful city of Ahmedabad in western India, and studied engineering as an undergrad at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) before deciding to switch fields to pursue my passion for Fine Arts at Syracuse University.

Initially, I was attracted to photography as an art medium for all its romantic notions, such as - “seeing the world with new eyes,” “finding beauty in the mundane,” “capturing the world at the decisive moment”, etc. Hence, during this period, I got interested in various genres such as street photography, photomicrography and architecture photography. However, my artistic practice recently had a paradigm shift ever since I discovered the insidious aspects of the medium that I loved so much and realized how the camera has historically been used as a weapon against certain groups of people. This epiphany was like coming out of Plato’s cave for me, and it changed the way I perceived and approached photography.

My current artistic practice is anchored on a critical paradigm inspired by Postcolonial discourses, exploring issues like identity, memory and cultural representation, with a specific interest in probing how photography was employed for othering during the British Raj and how these ethnographic photos exist in modern institutional archives and museums.

What inspires your art?

I am highly influenced by Aldous Huxley’s notion of art being a “protest against the horrible inclemency of life.” Hence, for me, art is not about beauty and visual pleasure. However, it is a tool for inducing critical thoughts in the viewer and hopefully facilitating some actual ground-level changes in the real world. I am more interested in tickling the viewer’s cerebral cortex than the retina. Lately, I have been incredibly inspired by conceptual artists using archival images in their work, such as Alfredo Jaar, Leonardo Katz, Stephanie Syjuco, Annu Matthew, Fred Wilson, Hank Willis Thomas, Binh Danh, RAQS Media Collective (among others).

What is an event which you would consider a milestone in your digital art career?

A significant pivot point in my nascent digital art career was discovering Rhizome’s Net Art database and realizing that the web browser can be used as a canvas. Perusing various projects on Rhizome made me think a lot about photos as ‘computational objects’ and the work of art in the age of digital reproduction.

*Screenshots from Rage Against the Archive, 2023 by Anshul Roy*

Tell us about a past or upcoming project - what’s special about it?

I am currently working on the project ‘Untitled (Rage Against The Archive)’, which deals with New York Public Library’s digital archives, and probes how their website catalogs and displays ethnographic photos, questioning the ideological messages embedded in this process. One central idea I am interested in exploring with this work is whether institutional archives perpetuate the cycle of colonial exploitation and the violent nature of the camera. And if they do, how does one fight against such an archive?

The 1868 book ‘The People of India’ is one of the world's oldest and most comprehensive ethnographic publications, commissioned by the British colonial government in India after the 1857 First War of Independence. After having experienced violent uprisings and the first direct challenge to colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent, the British government was keen to understand the native tribes and their cultures to rule them better and prevent future rebellions. The camera, masquerading as a purely objective device, was employed as an imperial tool by the colonial government to document natives in the process of ‘othering.’ Dehumanizing ethnographic portraits were made with an agenda to push forward a pseudo-scientific stance about the racial, economic and cultural inferiority of Indians to justify British colonial rule. How do these problematic images from the past exist in our contemporary institutional archives?

In my video, I used the web browser’s ‘Inspect Element’ feature, as an act of glitch resistance to alter the underlying code of NYPL’s website, frantically deleting traumatic archival photos and inserting texts in the website that subvert the colonial ideology and the fixity of memory present in the archive. This approach underscores how technology still commodifies the bodies of people of color. By removing the archival photos from NYPL’s site, I hope to restore some dignity to my ancestors, who have not only been exploited before by British colonial photographers but whose visual representations are also being commodified in modern society. Digital archives, in this case, instead of being harbingers of free knowledge, are just another way to amplify colonial exploitation, and they must be raged against.

Screenshots from Rage Against the Archive, 2023 by Anshul Roy

What does your creative process look like?

My creative process is heavily research-based, and I don’t start making art unless I have acquired a significant amount of knowledge about the topic. I spend most of my time in my studio reading research papers or books relevant to my artistic interests. Once I feel that I have a better understanding of the topic and a unique point of view, I initiate the process of creation, which is a bit experimental and allows me to jump from one idea to the other before settling for the perfect one for my purposes. Recently, I have also been trying to improve my oratory skills as I desire to foray into performance art.

What materials do you work with?

I use Google Chrome’s version 112.0.5615.137 on my Macbook and edit videos using Adobe Premiere Pro. I also use a projector when I am doing live website intervention/coding as a performance act.

What would we most probably find you doing if not creating art?

Swiveling on a chair thinking of ideas, reading Wikipedia, listening to songs, or debating with some friend.

Screenshots from Rage Against the Archive, 2023 by Anshul Roy

What is a fun fact about you?

I don’t wear matching shoes.

Do you have any speaking engagements, awards, exhibitions you’d like to mention?

My recent browser-based video was recently selected for a group show at :iidrr Gallery in NYC. The exhibition will open on 16th June and be up for a month. Apart from this, a Professor recently invited me to give an artist talk at my alma mater.

Some of my previous works have also been exhibited at places like Light Work (Syracuse, NY), PhotoWorks (San Francisco, CA), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Drewelowe Gallery (Iowa City, IA), Praxis Gallery (Minneapolis, MN) and the Black Box Gallery (Portland, OR).