Jirania
A National Highway cuts through Tripura’s agrarian landscape. Priti Das and Bipasha Debnath document the dust, demolition, and topsy-turvy lives of Jirania’s residents caught in years of transformation.
Published 31 December 2025
This has finished
- On view
- 12 December 2025 – 31 March 2026
- Times
- 10AM to 6PM (Mon to Sunday) Till March 31st, 2026
- Part of
- Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26
Where
BMS Warehouse
Event venue · Bazaar Road, Mattancherry
You’ve just missed it — take it home anyway
The 2025–26 Biennale ended on 31 March 2026. The next is expected around December 2027. We made a book of all 72 exhibits, venue by venue, with the photographs — 76 pages, 9 MB.
Amidst gathering dust, cement and steel, everyday lives and emotions remain topsy-turvy. A National Highway project cuts through what was once an agrarian landscape near Agartala.
Artists
Priti Das (Government College of Art and Craft, Agartala, Tripura), Bipasha Debnath (Government College of Art and Craft, Agartala, Tripura)
Medium
Acrylic on variable surface
About
Jirania documents the massive infrastructural transformation ongoing in Northeast India’s hinterlands—roadmaking being one crucial aspect. Pockets of semi-urbanity mushroom amid agricultural and forested landscapes, growing through the destruction of vast paddy fields, loss of tree canopies, and demolition of household architecture and small market areas.
Livelihoods and lifestyles remain precarious as road constructions go on for years. Jirania, near Agartala in Tripura, has been at the centre of such transformation.
Priti Das and Bipasha Debnath, residents of the area, take their own experience as the point of departure. They have collected statements and audio recordings from local people, gathered raw materials, and created photographic documentation to expand their visual medium.
What happens to a place—and its people—when progress arrives as dust and steel?