Arijit Bhattacharyya is the 2024 recipient of the Ruckhaberle Award. 

The statement of the jury:  

“The jury is deeply impressed by the artistic power and thematic depth of his project The Night of Long Silence. The spatial installation is a poignant essay on forms of remembering and forgetting, on museal objects and systems of classification—and on the recurring transnational, fascist desire for ethnic purity of bodies and ideas.

In his small-format drawings, Arijit Bhattacharyya engages with landscapes of violence, scenes of brutality, far-right attacks, and grieving relatives of the victims. His vividly colored depictions evoke, in their immediate intensity, images reminiscent of trauma therapy. They address, among other issues, the racist riots of the post-reunification years and the NSU series of murders. Arijit examines objects of colonial looted art, such as those found in museums like the Humboldt Forum, within the context of these violent interconnections.

Furthermore, he expands his focus to the global dimensions of violence and ideology by exploring the complex history of transcultural relations between National Socialism and the still influential Indian Hindu nationalism. In post-Nazi Germany, his works do not shy away from exposing how Heinrich Himmler was fascinated by yoga and the reappropriation of the Bhagavad Gita, or how Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar, leader of the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist paramilitary organization RSS, aligned his ideology closely with National Socialism.

What particularly convinced the jury was the spatial realization of his project: Arijit extends his series of drawings with museal objects—stuffed animals, found artifacts, letters—as well as an evocative audio commentary that invites us as museum visitors to actively participate in the process of critical remembrance and to confront essential questions: Do we remember what we must remember? Will Germany remember those it so desperately wishes to forget?

The Night of Long Silence deeply moved us with its critical testimony, which intertwines the personal and the political in a fragmentary yet precise manner.”

Born in Bally, West Bengal, Arijit Bhattacharyya now lives in Weimar, Thuringia. His practice combines installation, textiles, drawing, painting, film, performance, and culinary arts. His work explores historical narratives, ecological entanglements, and power structures while questioning anthropocentric paradigms and designing alternative, resistant systems. By subverting established power relations, he creates spaces for critical reflection and dialogue through collective collaboration, shedding light on the hegemonic and capitalist influences shaping global realities. Arijit is an alumnus of the Bauhaus Universität Weimar and the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University of Baroda.