Hard Rains VIII, 2024

Anurag Mitra is a visual artist whose work grows from the intersections of personal experience, ecological concern, and social engagement. Rooted in drawing, his practice begins with close observation—whether of his immediate environment, his own memories, or the socio-political changes unfolding around him. By translating these impressions into imaginative narratives, Mitra creates works that shift between the intimate and the universal, carrying the resonance of local stories into broader conversations on environment and identity.

Returning to his hometown in Tripura after several years, Mitra has confronted the drastic environmental transformation caused by deforestation and the spread of rubber plantations. These shifts—once-familiar landscapes now altered beyond recognition—inform some of his most recent works, where dead trees appear as stark metaphors for erasure, grief, and resilience. Through this lens, his drawings operate as both personal testimony and environmental critique, transforming the loss of home into a visual language of shared ecological urgency.

Mitra finished his Bachelor of Visual Art in Drawing & Painting at the Government College of Art and Craft, Tripura (2015 - 2019). His work has been presented in Kaizen (Gallery, Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Vadodara, 2025), the 30th Ravi Jain Memorial Foundation Annual Award Show (Dhoomimal Gallery, Delhi, 2021), Abhivyakti City Arts Festival. Edition 3 (Ahmedabad, 2020), and the Student’s Biennale (Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2018–19), alongside several national and online exhibitions. His community-driven project The Scars You Can’t See (2022), supported by Artvarta Research Grant, engaged collective memory and healing in Bamutia, Tripura. He has also participated in art camps including Paint the Canvas (Kurukshetra, 2021).

His practice has been recognized with the Lalit Kala Akademi Scholarship (2022–24), and his works continue to combine the rigor of his Baroda-based training with the sensibilities of his Tripura roots. In doing so, Mitra articulates a practice that is both personal and political, drawing grief, memory, and transformation into a dialogue on belonging and change.