Book launch and conversation
Title of Talk: Ancestral Practice, Lived Knowledge and Art between artist and pedagogue Prasanta Sahu & Epsita Halder (Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University)
As part of India Art Fair 2026, Emami Art presents the launch of the publication The Geometry of Ordinary Lives: A Solo Exhibition by Prasanta Sahu – relating to the artist’s solo at Emami Art, Kolkata in 2025 by the same title.
Date: 8 February 2026
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Venue: Nuvama Private Wealth Verve Lounge
The solo exhibition presented Prasanta Sahu's decade-long inquiry into the intersection of art, research, and lived experience, encapsulating the evolution of his interdisciplinary practice, characterised by a synthesis of diverse media and epistemologies to explore the subtleties of rural and suburban life through traditional knowledge, pre-industrial practices, and inherited wisdom. The book, with sections from Sahu’s scrapbooking practice and an interview of the artist by art historian, broadcaster, and commentator Dr Cleo Robert-Komireddi, outlines Sahu’s research-driven approach, reimagining artistic practice as a means of epistemological preservation.
In conversation with the artist will be researcher, academic, and translator Epsita Halder, who has previously written extensively on Sahu’s practice for an article set to be published in the upcoming issue of the magazine TAKE on Art. The book will be available for sale and signing by the artist at the venue.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Prasanta Sahu (b. 1968) holds a diploma in Electrical Engineering (1987), a BFA and an MFA in Painting from Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan (1998) and M.S. University, Baroda (2000) respectively. His solos include The Geometry of Ordinary Lives; Emami Art, Kolkata, 2025; Anatomy of a Vegetable, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022-23; Suburban Shadows, Emami Art, Kolkata, 2020; and Blueprint of a City, Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, 2016; while group exhibitions include Obsessions, Possessions, Coventry Biennial, UK, 2025; Material as Metaphors, NGMA, Kolkata, 2025; Dialogues Across Time, Indian Museum x Basu Foundation, Kolkata, 2025; All That is Hidden, Emami Art, Kolkata, 2024; The Politics of Paper, Emami Art, Kolkata, 2022; and Multitudes and Assemblages, Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti di Torino, Italy, 2021; among others. Based in Santiniketan, Sahu is Assistant Professor at the Department of Painting, Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati.
Epsita Halder is Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University. Her monograph Reclaiming Karbala: Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslims (2023), a study of Muslim cultural nationalism in colonial Bengal, has received the World Book Award of Iran as well as an award from the Indian History Congress. She has been a visiting fellow at several research institutions in Europe. Parts of her research on the Muharram tradition have been supported by grants from the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore, and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Halder has edited and co-translated The Open-Winged Scorpion and Other Stories by Abul Bashar and Stayed Back, Stayed On: Short Stories by Bengali Muslim Writers. She writes regularly on socio-cultural issues and creative forms. Her column Hente Dekhte Shikhun is a barefoot historian’s exploration of Kolkata.
