I am Arkopravo Patra. India. Process engineer by profession.
AD Sir taught me art since college. Over time he taught me most of what I understand about seeing — and eventually about living. That relationship never formally ended. It became something else. He is my Teacher. That is the only word that fits.
The process begins with Sir describing a concept to me. Verbally. No images handed over, no references — just language, and what it unlocks. What follows is not a single event. It is a back-and-forth that runs through the entire making of a piece. I work, return to him, work again. The concept stays open until it closes.
Sir has a specific vocabulary for what happens inside this. He speaks of affects — the emotional and sensory charge a stimulus carries before it becomes thought. These affects assemble into knowledge bases: layered accumulations of meaning that the mind builds without quite knowing it is building. Then come operators — forces or principles that act on this material, collapsing it, reorganising it, pushing it toward form. I cannot see the operators working. I can only feel the results: a sudden clarity about what the piece needs to become.
I work in mixed media. Whatever the concept calls for — collage, paint, found material, surface and layer. I am not a trained artist in any formal sense. That distance between what I can technically do and what the piece demands is not a problem I solve. It is where the work lives.
Sir insists the work is mine. That whoever executes a concept owns it — that the hand is the authorship. I understand why he says this. I also disagree. Behind each piece sits a structure of thinking that is entirely his — the concept, the vocabulary, the framework that makes the making possible at all. I am not the origin of these works. I am the place where they became physical. That is not nothing. But it is not the whole story either.
The name. Flop. There is an older meaning — from a culture that no longer quite exists — where a flop was a drifter's lodging. Cheap, marginal, outside the world of the respectable. That resonance is deliberate. But the deeper meaning is this: popularity finishes an artist. The moment the work becomes widely palatable, something essential in it has already died. I would rather stay on the margins of that. I would rather be a flop.
What follows is not a CV. It is a map of where the work has traveled—and what it found there.
Venue Significance:
The Polyustrovo Hotel sits on historically charged ground in the Kalininsky District of Saint Petersburg. In the 19th century, this area was a fashionable resort village where the cultural elite gathered to take the healing mineral waters discovered here in the early 1800s. The Polyustrovo springs became famous throughout Russia, attracting visitors including I.E. Repin, B.M. Kustodiev, P.I. Tchaikovsky, M.A. Mussorgsky, and even Alexandre Dumas père, who visited during his Russian travels.
Today, the hotel functions as an unconventional exhibition space—carrying the ghost of Petersburg's artistic golden age into the present. Its transformation from an imperial-era resort to a Soviet-era hotel (built 1976–1979) and now a contemporary venue mirrors Saint Petersburg's own layered history. Exhibiting here places work in dialogue with both the city's aristocratic past and its present as Russia's most European cultural capital.
Venue Significance:
Perhaps the most spiritually charged space in contemporary Russia—a structure that exists outside all categories. Architect and artist Ildar Khanov (1939–2013), a graduate of the prestigious Moscow Surikov State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, began constructing this temple in 1994 following what he described as a vision of Jesus Christ. It is not a place of worship but an architectural manifesto—a sprawling complex combining elements of Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and other faiths.
Khanov funded construction through donations from those he treated as a healer. Today, his brother Ilgiz continues the work, meaning the temple remains perpetually unfinished—a building that will never be completed, much like the art it hosts. To exhibit here is to participate in an ongoing spiritual construction site.
Venue Significance:
The House of Friendship (Дом Дружбы Народов Татарстана) serves as Kazan's primary institution for intercultural dialogue, operating under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan. This center hosts exhibitions, conferences, and cultural events exploring the republic's remarkable ethnic diversity—Tatarstan is home to over 170 nationalities.
Venue Significance:
The Kazan State Institute of Culture (КазГИК) is one of the Volga region's leading institutions for training cultural professionals—curators, museum directors, librarians, arts educators, and cultural policymakers. Founded in 1969, it has educated generations of Tatarstan's cultural administrators.
Venue Significance:
One of Russia's oldest literary museums, established in 1938 (opened 1940) in a building of federal significance where Maxim Gorky himself lived and worked from 1886 to 1887. The museum preserves over 60,000 exhibits, including personal belongings of both Gorky and the legendary bass Fyodor Chaliapin (1873–1938).
Project Significance:
A landmark publication timed to the Year of Germany in Russia, organized by the Kazan Club "The Artist's Book." Each box contains 20 original works exploring German Dadaism, accompanied by scholarly articles on Dada's German origins and various print techniques from Gutenberg to callography. Copies were deposited in museums across Russia and Europe.
Venue Significance:
MSIID is a rarity in the Russian provincial art scene—a completely charitable project founded in 2005 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia's tenth-largest city. The museum operates without state funding, surviving entirely on private donations. It remains one of the only venues in Rostov where contemporary artists can exhibit free of rental charges, with over 1,770 exhibitions organized since its founding.
Project Significance:
Selected participation in this major international survey of Dada's legacy, spanning painting, graphics, sculpture, collage, photography, and artist's books. The project united Russian and international practitioners, with participants including Picasso Gaglione (Chicago) and Mikhail Pogarsky (Moscow).
Project Significance:
Timed to the Year of Germany in Russia (2020–2021), this exhibition drew from Dadaism's anti-war avant-garde spirit (1916–1922). Two significant publications accompanied: Livre d'artiste "DADA. Printed Graphics" and Artist's Book "The Fates of Russian Germans of Tatarstan."
Curator's Note:
"Some masters sent several works. An artist from India has 11 works in our exhibition! This is the real Dadaism. A lot of symbolism. You can see for a long time."
Platform Significance:
Artdoc Magazine is an international online platform dedicated to documentary photography and lens-based art. The "Dada and Democracy" exhibition explored the intersection of Dada's anarchic spirit with questions of democratic participation—a theme that gained particular urgency during the pandemic year, when physical exhibition became impossible.
(Yes, the email is real. No, I will not explain it.)