„I Recall the Forest Inside Me“ - Ishita Chakraborty Galerie Peter Kilchmann

„I Recall the Forest Inside Me“ – Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich (19. September – 8. November 2025)

Ishita Chakraborty

In her solo exhibition I Recall the Forest Inside Me at Galerie Peter Kilchmann, the India-born and Switzerland-based artist Ishita Chakraborty interweaves personal memory with global histories of landscape and colonialism.

The show features large-scale wall drawings, delicate works on sari fabric, glass and porcelain sculptures, as well as paper prints. Plants, maps, and materials become carriers of stories about migration, belonging, and identity.

Her central themes revolve around the relationship between humans and nature, the traces of colonial exploitation, and the question of which landscapes we carry within ourselves. Chakraborty references plants such as cocoa, coffee, and rubber – symbols of global entanglement between the Global South and North.

Her poetic yet critical visual language merges fragile materials – sari fabric, glass, porcelain – with precise craftsmanship. Works like The Soil We Were Born and Between the Land and Sea I reveal how memory, the body, soil, and history are interwoven in both vulnerability and strength.

With this exhibition, Chakraborty creates a dense, multilayered narrative about origin, transformation, and the quiet presence of nature as a mirror of human experience.

Fotocredit

Photograph: Sebastian Schaub -

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Peter

Kilchmann, Zurich/Paris

Framing & Collaboration

For the exhibition I Recall the Forest Inside Me by Ishita Chakraborty, the frames were created in close collaboration with the artist – a process defined by mutual trust, respect, and sensitivity to material and meaning.

Each frame was hand-painted using carefully selected kt.color paints in subtle shades of white or deep black. Form, depth, and spacing were developed individually for each piece – always with the intention to neither add nor take away, but to quietly accompany and support the work’s presence.

The collaboration with both the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann was exceptionally smooth and respectful, marked by a shared understanding of precision, materiality, and expression.