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

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 media 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 practised, adapted, and transferred. 

Sahu's artistic vocabulary is shaped by his engineering background and early experiences with survey mapping and technical drafting. The principles of cartography profoundly influence his visual lexicon, where spatial logic and geometric structuring serve as conceptual frameworks to illustrate the interconnectedness of craft, oral traditions, and embodied knowledge. Beyond this systematic approach, poetry plays a crucial role in his practice, offering both a conceptual and emotional foundation. He often perceives the inherent logic of certain acts as poetic, situating them within an abstract, almost metaphysical realm. The interplay of absence and presence, along with the non-linearity of narratives, resonates 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.