The Geometry of Ordinary Lives: A solo exhibition by Prasanta Sahu

Exhibition Overview

The solo exhibition The Geometry of Ordinary Lives presents Prasanta Sahu's decade-long inquiry into the intersection of art, research, and lived experience. This exhibition encapsulates the evolution of his interdisciplinary practice, characterised by a synthesis of diverse mediums and epistemologies to explore the subtleties of rural and suburban life through traditional knowledge, pre-industrial practices, and inherited wisdom.

At the core of his work is a critical engagement with generational knowledge and its transmission. He considers the workshops of blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, and craftsmen as dynamic repositories where techniques, philosophies, and stories are orally shared and safeguarded. Sahu’s work examines how these traditions persist despite the homogenization of economic and socio-political forces. His research-driven approach incorporates textual documentation, diagrammatic studies, object casting, interviews, and audio recordings of artisans engaged in generational occupations. The numerical, statistical, and diagrammatic elements in his work function as representational devices and indices of traditions, offering a methodological framework for understanding the fluidity of knowledge as it is practiced, adapted, and transferred.

Sahu's artistic vocabulary is shaped by his background in engineering and early engagements with survey mapping and technical drafting. The instruments of cartographic principles profoundly influence his visual lexicon, where spatial logic and geometric structuring serve as conceptual scaffolds to map the interconnectedness of craft, oral traditions, and embodied knowledge. Beyond this systematic approach, poetry plays a vital role in his practice, providing both a conceptual and affective framework. He often locates the inherent logic of certain acts as poetic, registering them within an abstract, almost metaphysical realm. The interplay of absence and presence, along with the non-linearity of narratives, aligns with poetic sensibilities, transforming his work into a site of cultural continuity where practice and memory intertwine.

Ultimately, The Geometry of Ordinary Lives reimagines artistic practice as a means of epistemological preservation. By integrating cartographic logic, archival inquiry, and poetic sensibility, Sahu constructs a visual repository that interrogates the resilience of ancient wisdom amid rapid transformations. His work positions art as a space for critical reflection, where craft and ancestral knowledge challenge the monopolisation of selective philosophical discourse and resist cultural erasure.

About the Artists

Prasanta Sahu, born in 1968 in Odisha, India, completed his diploma in Electrical Engineering (1987) before enrolling to study art at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. There, he earned his BFA in painting (1998), followed by a Master’s degree in painting from M.S. University, Baroda (2000), graduating summa cum laude from both universities.

Sahu’s solo shows include Anatomy of a Vegetable: Ruminations on Fragile Ecosystems as part of the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2022-23 Invited Satellite Programme at Mocha Art Café, Kochi; ‘Suburban Shadows’ at Emami Art, Kolkata, in 2020, and ‘Blueprint of a City’ at Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad in 2016.

Sahu has shown widely both within and outside the country and participated in numerous workshops and residencies. Some select participations are All That is Hidden: Mapping Departures in Landscape, Terrains and Geographies, Emami Art, Kolkata, 2024; The Politics of Paper, Emami Art, Kolkata, 2022; Hub India-Maximum Minimum, Artissima International Art Fair of Contemporary Art, Torino, Italy, 2021; Disruptive Confluences at Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Torino and Multitudes and Assemblages at Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino, a three-part museum show jointly curated by Davide Quadrio and Myna Mukherjee, 2021; Asian Higher Fine Arts Education, hosted by Yunnan Provincial Department of Education, Organized by ASEAN-China Arts Colleges Alliance, Yunnan Artists Association, and Yunnan Arts University, 2020; Lockdown Diaries, CIMA art gallery, Kolkata, 2020; Art: Bengal Now, Bengal Contemporary artists, curated by Pranab Ranjan Ray, jointly organised by Gandhara art Gallery, Kolkata and Dhoomimal art Gallery, New Delhi, New Delhi, 2020; Anthology of Anecdotes, Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata, 2019; Kursi, a group show of sculptures, paintings and installations, Sarjan art Gallery, Baroda, 2019; Blue India Art Asia Art Fair Korea, 2018; Constellations, Bihar Museum, Patna, 2018; Response, a new-media and installation show at Gem Cinema CIMA art gallery, Kolkata, 2018; Postcards, Busan International art Fair, Korea, 2017; 16 young contemporary artists, Karnataka Chithrakala Parisath, Bangalore, 2017; Daegu-India Korean Fine Arts Association South Korea, 2015-2017; 7th Biennial of contemporary Indian art, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, 2017; among many others.

Sahu has been invited as visiting faculty by several universities, including the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Burapha University, Thailand; University of Dhaka, Bangladesh; University of Hyderabad, Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts and Communication, Hyderabad.

Since 2001, Sahu has been teaching in the Department of Painting at his alma mater, Kala Bhavana (Faculty of Fine Art), Visva Bharati University. 

Prasanta Sahu is the head of the Department of Painting at Kala-Bhavana, Santiniketan, India. He lives and works there.