Akup Buchemhu is a well renowned artist hailing from Nagaland. After completing his degree from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata,he moved to Delhi to pursue his passion of Sculpture.
The Artist says:
My works serves as the documentation, recreation and acceptance of modernization at my native place of Nagaland. Being born and brought up in a tribal environment, my intense love for my memories and nature can be easily observed through my works.
I spend my childhood in eastern part of Nagaland from the ‘Phom’ tribe. This tribal environment brought many cultural activities, rituals, festivals and their contents in my art practice and tribe itself which carry deep impact in my creativity.
In the past Nagas were know as head hunters because we have a territorial kingdom kind of practise, warring tribe for territorial. Naga’s carries their own way of doings in rituals, craftsmanship and town planning in a particular tribe. Though Christianity had its presence, Naga people didn’t leave some of their ancient values and rituals. I tried to research and recreate those documents of missing object, memories and environment into my art work in co-operating with industrial material. Being a member of the tribal community growth, abandonment, ruin, survival, affect the way my works has progress. when I was small I live in a small number of house hold filled with green environment of natural surrounding everywhere, but now all those spaces is no more they are filled with tall concrete houses and factories.
Through my works I try to recreate memories, rituals and changing landscape of my place with respect of time through manipulation of some found objects from metro. Every work carries some knots of my past native way of doings. An attempt to create a language of the oral told traditional which has been percolated through layers of information and the process as I gather from various sources of myth and folk tale.
My works serves the purpose of documenting the existence and growth of modernization in my tribe at the completely detached environment. With an intention to constructs an environment that tacitly responds to the process and forces shaping the growth and life of modern cities. I tried to create a delicate formal language, a tenuous network of creative exchange and correspond between materials and environment through which to envisage other spaces, a setting that holds the promise of a transformative experience beyond the everyday material.