The quiet desperation of successive generations of farmers clinging to their vanishing land; the glow of a street lamp that reflects rural cultural practices rapidly being replaced by modernity; maps of changing contours—The Geometry of Ordinary Lives is a tour de force of Prasanta Sahu’s observation and penchant for juxtaposing diverse epistemologies into a cohesive whole. The Shantiniketan-based artist’s ongoing solo show at Emami Art in Kolkata defies easy interpretation and an attempt to impose a fixed meaning or label on his oeuvre would be to miss out on rich complexity and multifaceted beauty.
Some paintings in the exhibition drawn from personal experiences delve deeper into a way of life facing extinction. On Ancestral Fragments or Division of Ancestral Lands, he explains:
“Rural land being divided between generations over time, will disappear. The work is influenced by a vivid memory from my hometown Chaughari in Odisha; as a child, I used to see the Subarnarekha River overflowing in the rains. There would be constant flooding and nature’s fury would wipe out everything. The poor villagers would have to remap the whole area again.” Sahu has also included a hand-drawn map of his village and even minor details like plot numbers in this painting.
“Most of my works start by revisiting or catching up with old memories and later connecting with other related areas from both contemporary times and the past,” says the 57-year-old artist. His primary concern is not to dwell on ideas of social justice but instead, to unravel “ordinary lives, tracing the connecting threads of ancient occupations and examining how traditional knowledge systems have survived many changes.”
Sahu trained as an electrical engineer and even worked briefly in a mine. His engineering background has long informed his artistic vision. Apart from incorporating cartographic surveys and technical drawings, he frequently plays around with text and typefaces. “As engineers, we refrained from including certain elements in a traditional architectural drawing. In art, I am free to experiment with different ideas, crafts and tools from other mediums in innovative ways and explore new possibilities,” smiles Sahu, who studied painting at the Kala Bhavana in Visva Bharati University, Shantiniketan and MS University in Baroda.
His preoccupation with fonts dates back to the years before digital tools. “I manually created instruction boards, incumbency charts, signboards and hoardings. I use these skills in distinct ways and for different purposes in my work,” explains Sahu, who taught at Kala Bhavana for over two decades. “Listening to the point of view of my students, understanding their artistic difficulties and answering their straightforward yet insightful questions inspires me and widens my own horizon,” says the versatile Sahu, who’s also a poet and an exponent of classical music.
He sees poetry as yet another frontier of visual art and has written over 600 poems and dreams of publishing them someday. Over the past decade, he has also explored the remarkable diversity of Dhrupad music, trying to play and perfect it on the violin. “The interconnectedness of playing music, writing poetry and creating art resonates with me,” he says. India is not running out of Renaissance artists. Its adding to them.