Philippe Calia (b.1985, Paris) is an artist currently based in Bangalore.
His work has received several awards and has been exhibited in various museums, galleries and festivals across Europe and Asia, including Jimei x Arles (China, 2024); Les Rencontres d’Arles (France, 2023) ; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (Germany, 2023); SIPF (Singapore, 2022); and UP Gallery (Taïwan, 2021).
In his practice, Calia primarily uses photography and video to explore the politics of memory. Examining various institutions (the archive, the library, the museum) or technologies (the album, the digital cloud), he sheds light on their discourses, as well as the modes of preservation, perception and commemoration which they attempt to establish.
Experimenting with the form, language and temporality of the photographic medium enables him to pursue this enquiry while questioning an image-making apparatus essentially based on accumulation and extraction. Calia thus aims to ignite some form of critical awareness by working with images of various kinds - between found and constructed, figuration and abstraction, moving and still - rather than seeking a particular photographic style. Nonetheless the form and presentation of these images in space is always crucial, allowing him to explore the situational dimensions of authorship and viewership.
Since 2013, Calia has been collaborating as a photo editor with PIX, a platform for contemporary photography in South Asia. Between 2015 and 2020, he co-directed BIND, a platform for photobooks in India with a public library based in Bombay.