Charts, maps, routes, architectural drawings, wheels, pottery, utensils, rural life, daily labour—these images and ideas repeat like a motif in the works of the artist Prasanta Sahu. This is not conventionally artistic material, and therein lies the point of Sahu’s oeuvre: he makes each one of them tell the stories of their humdrum lives, which come together in the end to speak of the interconnectedness of life. The aesthetics of ordinary lives is what concerns him.
Sahu says he goes back to his roots in Chaughari, a remote village in Odisha, for inspiration. Born in 1968, he lived there until age 12, but his childhood memories have acted as a stimulus since, leaving imprints on his future work. He is not driven by nostalgia, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. His ideas stem from the ground realities of both his original homeland and of Santiniketan, where he received his first training in art and where he has been teaching since 2001.
His solo exhibition “The Geometry of Ordinary Lives” (April 25 to June 21), which concluded recently at Emami Art, Kolkata, made his inspirations amply clear. Here we saw how his earlier training in electrical engineering at Bhadrak, Odisha, planted in him the seeds of the idea of adopting an analytical approach and creating work that leaned heavily on his map-making and cross-sectional drawing skills. He could connect these with the time he assisted his father, a State government surveyor, to measure land to make survey maps.
The combined effect—including the years spent training as an artist at Kala Bhavana and later at Baroda—can be seen in the finely detailed painting titled Elements I Forgot to Add While Designing a Solar Lamp in our Locality, of a solar lamp installed in a suburb, with small businesses thriving under it.
Looking beyond the familiar
Sahu did a stint in advertising and painting hoardings as well. He even worked at Baula mines in Odisha but left after a week. “I despaired at the thought of working as an assistant engineer all my life at the expense of my artistic sensibilities,” he said. But he did not let his exposure to different professions and the experience acquired thereby go in vain.
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They allowed Sahu to look beyond the familiar, erasing something to highlight some other aspect. Thus, some of Sahu’s most striking works in this exhibition were three related, starkly limned canvases (one of these is titled Sitting Man in an Ancient Landscape). It depicts a man, presumably a farmer or labourer, seen from behind, with only a part of his lungi-clad body, arms, and legs visible. The figure is fragmented. Only when the dashes are connected do they form the body. A tangle of lines that is actually a jumble of carefully delineated drawings occupies the rest of the white space, allowing for free play of the viewers’ imagination.
An installation of two poems composed by Sahu cleared the fog. “From early on, I have read Odia literature, my favourites being Sitakant Mohapatra, Ramakanta Rath, and Sachidananda Routray. I love to write poetry in Odia and English, since it gives him a sense of liberation,” he said. Two of them, “Erased Lines” and “Paheli Pradhan’s Dream”, were used to create installations since he wanted to unshackle them “from the confines of the notebook and project them mid-air, where they become a visual entity”.
“Mapping My Neighbourhood”. Acrylic on acid-free paper, 2024, Santiniketan. | Photo Credit: Prasanta Sahu and Emami Art.
The first is about his trip to his childhood village, when in a quest for self-discovery, he looked for the marks left behind by himself and his ancestors. The second poem is based on a short story, “Andharua”, by Sachidananda Routray about a marginalised farmer, Pahali Pradhan, and another farmer of the same name Sahu met 50 years after reading the story. Fact and fiction coincide in Sahu’s poem as, in his dreams, the farmer turns into the fertile soil that yields lush vegetation.
The words of Sahu’s poems were cut out of steel plates using laser cutting machines. When displayed on the wall, the interplay of the steel words and their shadows became inseparable, creating a puzzle that the viewer wanted to unscramble.
Engaged with the underclasses
Sahu’s engagement with the underclasses is not new. In an earlier “Study” exhibited in a group show but not included here—drawings on paper with Japanese ink—construction workers are reduced to nameless silhouettes risking their lives to ascend the grid of scaffolding, underlining how we refuse to acknowledge that they too are flesh-and-blood beings like any of us.
“Ancestral Fragments or The Division of Ancestral Lands”. Acrylic and graphite on Lokta paper pasted on acid-free paper. Overall diptych 2025, Santiniketan. | Photo Credit: Prasanta Sahu and Emami Art.
“Something may look ordinary, but you can discover a complex web of realities when you investigate them,” he said. Such as the wheels of a bullock cart, apparently a mundane object that yet contains in itself the story of human evolution. Sahu fears that “ancestral knowledge” and skills related to premodern crafts may not survive in our times. And so, they deserve documentation.
As a part of his projects, Sahu selects people related to some traditional occupation such as farming. Having descended from an agrarian family, Sahu keenly observes the farmer as he tills the soil, just as his forefathers did. Sahu asserts that he works the way a journalist or an anthropologist does with the difference that as an artist he tries to excavate a larger area, “sincerely” documenting the process. But it is not straightforward documentation, for it is reinterpreted by his imagination, and results in works that straddle painting, drawing, installation sculptures, and photography.
“Erased Lines”. Laser-cut mild steel and enamel paint, 2025, Santiniketan. | Photo Credit: Prasanta Sahu and Emami Art.
This concern was clearly behind the making of the large works titled Vessels of Memory and An Inquiry into the Smoke, respectively, showing the potter and the blacksmith he encounters in Santiniketan every other day. He takes photographs of them on which he bases his work, but when it comes to execution, he has to exercise artistic freedom, erasing certain figures to highlight others. And so, Sahu connects a generational occupation to our times.
Diagrammatic language
The distinctive aesthetic of Sahu’s work is based not on dry data but on a diagrammatic language closely related to architectural drawings, as suggested by the title of the exhibition. These sophisticated graphics take shape when the imagination is given a free rein. The artist writes: “I view my practice as investigation and my locus as inspiration. Some core areas of concern in my practice are: Memory as a collective identity, rural to urban migration as a record of changing identity, Oral-histories as record, Diary entry as a trace of memories, Photo/video-documentation as process of speculative inquiry, and Painting and Drawing as poetic investigation and record keeping.”
“Elements I Forgot to Add While Designing a Solar Lamp in Our Locality”. Acrylic on acid-free paper, 2024, Santiniketan. | Photo Credit: Prasanta Sahu and Emami Art.
In a work titled Mapping my Neighbourhood, Sahu mapped the route he takes in Santiniketan while going to work, depicting the shops, bazaars, potters, a lottery-ticket seller, cycle repair shops, tea stalls, cattle lazing on the path, and electric rickshaws. This is not a simple chart. Sahu introduced variety by using several shades of grey to distinguish the figures. Even the inescapable drudgery of daily routine is not without contrasts. In a map of his ancestral land in his native village Chaughari (Ancestral Fragments or The Division of Ancestral Lands), Sahu introduced clones of a farmer stooping over to measure the land that belongs to him. This annual exercise has continued for generations as the lands get inundated by annual floods, erasing the map showing the small plots belonging to individual farmers. In yet another drawing, partially visible, colourful male and female figures emerge from Behind the Walls (also the title)—a large expanse of blank white space. Their gait has the stiffness of bearing of labourers depicted in ancient Egyptian murals. In all these works, the economy of lines and colour is remarkable. Not a single stroke is redundant, yet they all have a story to tell.
“Vessels of Memory”. Acrylic on acid-free paper. 2024, Santiniketan. | Photo Credit: Prasanta Sahu and Emami Art.
Sahu’s only single-channel video installation, The Geometry of Ordinary Lives, shows a huge wok full of syrup in which rosogollas float—white blobs swimming in dark fluid—like the spawn of frogs. Even here he employed an analytical approach as he photographed the process of making these sweets—quite a common sight in both Odisha and Bengal—and made drawings based on them showing perfect circles. He even noted down the number of rosogollas a single person can make in a given number of minutes. The hands that produce these orbs are depicted in a couple of coloured drawings in the same series.
Perhaps unconsciously, Sahu’s art seems to allude to E.M. Forster’s dictum “Only connect” as he tries to find connections between apparently disparate things and ideas. This was evident in the large number of small works displayed on a 25 feet wide panel. These works were divergent, but one could discern links when one realised that these were Sahu’s random jottings—a free flow of thoughts. They had drawings and text similar to the content of Sahu’s notebooks displayed in another section.
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Sahu presented his work in such a manner that we could easily visualise the connections between the village and the city and, similarly, between different segments of our society. Where do we stand unless we connect?
Soumitra Das is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.
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