Sarnath Banerjee (b. 1972) is a visual artist, an author of graphic fiction, and a publisher. Banerjee's work employs a surreal style, combining humor and realistic drawings with elements of caricature as he writes between history, fiction, and mundane reality. He was formerly an adjunct Professor at the History Department, University of Kassel, Germany. Till date, Banerjee is the author of five books of graphic fiction, beginning with Corridor (Penguin Books, 2004).
Banerjee’s most recent solo exhibition, The Spectral Times, explored the idea of introducing sound into comics, and took place at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum (2019). In collaboration with historians, he has produced Liquid History of Vasco Da Gama for the Kochi Biennial (2014) and The Poona Circle, a series of vandalised history textbooks, for the Pune Biennale (2017). For Frans-Hals museum, he produced I Got Ginger; a series of drawings and text that proposed the making of an ‘insubordinate’ children’s book on Dutch colonialism (2017). His billboard series, Gallery of Losers, commissioned by Frieze Projects East, for the 2012 London Olympics, was widely displayed in East London. In 2016, he was commissioned over 80 murals by Deutsche Bank for their new offices in Canary Wharf.
Banerjee also co-founded the award-winning publishing house Phantomville that brought together reporters and comic-book artists to produce works of visual journalism. His column, The Enchanted Geography, was run by a national newspaper in India. Banerjee has received the Belknap fellowship from the history department of Princeton, 2019 and the CAST fellowship, MIT, 2019, developing the idea of theatrical lectures. Last year, he received the Berlin senate grant to write a book on his migrational experience.