Not the history of comics, but the mechanics of how they are made is the focus of The Craft of Comics exhibition in Kolkata, on till December 7. The who’s who of Indian comics is exhibiting originals, prints, installations, drafts and sketches at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture. The star cast: Amruta Patil, Appupen, Argha Manna, Chitra Ganesh, Ikroop Sandhu, Ita Mehrotra, Joshy Benedict, Orijit Sen, Priya Kuriyan, Sankha Banerjee, Sarbajit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh.
The mammoth project was curated by designer-illustrator Pinaki De and Birla Academy’s Sujaan Mukherjee. “It would be uninteresting to pluck comic book panels and present them as they are,” explains De. “It’s more fun to look at panels in multiple ways: magnified, as part of a story, as video installation, or…