Emami Art presents PURVAI: Printmaking in Eastern India - Pedagogy to Practice, a group exhibition curated by artist, academician, curator, researcher, and writer Dr Paula Sengupta that traces the curve of contemporary printmaking across Eastern India from the pedagogical space to the realm of practice – featuring 43 artists from the Northeastern states, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
This is a collateral exhibition to the 3rd Print Biennale India organised by Lalit Kala Akademi.
Participating Artists
Aadya Kumari | Ajit Seal | Amiya Ranjan Ojha | Ananya Dalal | Anupam Chakraborty | Arpan Mukherjee | Atanu Bakshi | Chandan Bez Baruah | Cross Cat Collective | Debnath Basu | Deepanwita Das | Jayanta Naskar | Jayeeta Chatterjee | Khokan Giri | Moutushi Chakraborty | Nalinakshya Talukdar | Nilanjan Das | Nutan Kishor Nishad | Parag Roy | Pathik Sahoo | Paula Sengupta | Pinaki Barua | Pradip Das | Prarthana Hazra | Priyanka Lodh | Rabi Narayan Gupta | Rahul Sarkar | Raja Boro | Rajarshi Sengupta | Raj Kumar Mazinder | Sambaran Das | Sangita Maity | Sarika Goswami | Sheshadev Sagria | Soumyabrata Kundu | Srabani Sarkar | Srikanta Paul | Subrat Kumar Behera | Sujay Mukherjee | Sunandini Banerjee | Suranjan Basu | Sweety Chakma | Temsüyanger Longkumer
Curatorial Note
PURVAI explores contemporary printmaking across Eastern India, encompassing the Northeastern states, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh. With Bengal as the pivotal point from which modern/contemporary printmaking in the region is traced, the exhibition examines the institutional and artistic nurturing of the medium from the late-20th century onwards.
PURVAI maps the role of art institutions in fostering printmaking in Eastern India, where infrastructural needs have kept the medium closely tied to pedagogy. The exhibition foregrounds faculty and alumni who have sustained, transformed, and expanded printmaking practice, often emerging as experimental innovators. From politically engaged practitioners and narrativists to spiritual abstractionists, the artists in PURVAI address the human predicament and their undeniable impact in the anthropocene epoch.
In addition to traditional printmaking, PURVAI also highlights niche and expanded practices including bookmaking, graphic narratives, papermaking, textile-based approaches, digital and photographic processes, moving image, and sculptural extensions. By bringing together both regional practitioners and artists connected through practice, PURVAI underscores Eastern India’s vibrant, experimental, and evolving printmaking ecosystem—one that indelibly shapes India’s artistic modernity and contributes significantly to global contemporary art.
A fraught Earth
The anthropocene is defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment”. Emerging as the overriding concern in PURVAI, most especially with an emerging generation of artist-printmakers who will inherit a fraught Earth, practitioners here apply the inherent possibilities of this medium to inflict wound to express their anguish. From using injured organic surfaces as the matrix to lift rubbings, to etching with acids, to wielding gouging and sculptural tools to inflict wound, as also heal through the use of natural dyes and pigments that are the offerings of the Earth, medium as metaphor emerges strongly through the work of these practitioners.
The human predicament
From quirky humour to sombre narratives, there is a wide range of preoccupations seen in the work of these printmakers. Women, and consequently children, emerge as a major leitmotif, with printmaking processes extending themselves on to supports usually seen as women’s domains. Archival/non-archival photographic images combine with printmaking processes, as also “pure” printmaking processes alone, to address human relationships within societal and urban structures. And, in the final count, the human being playing his/her role in the Earth that he/she inhabits.
Samaj
Tagore championed the cause of a community founded on ‘social harmony’ through spontaneous interaction between ‘self-regulated’ members of the community (samaj), as against a community ruled from the top. He tried to build such communities in Santiniketan and Sriniketan.
In 1984, with a similar philosophy in mind, though strongly impacted by Marxist thought, a group came together in Santiniketan to critically address certain questions - Why should we make art? Can art be political and social? Art for whom, about what, and how? In 1990, they christened themselves The Realists. Printmaking, seen as a medium for the masses due to editioning that affords it a wider reach, emerged as the medium of choice for The Realists, who published illustrated manifestoes, print folios, calendars, etc., in addition to their personal practices.
This legacy is carried forward by the Kala Bhavana alumni and beyond, now harnessing digital technologies that afford still wider access alongside traditional relief printmaking.
- Dr Paula Sengupta
