Counter Poetry: A Changing Chilika Through Art

A Changing Chilika Through Art

Art Centrix Space presents Counter Poetry, the first solo exhibition in India of Bhubaneswar-based artist Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty, curated by Sibdas Sengupta. On view at the gallery in New Delhi from 1st October 2026 to 20th November 2026, the show brings together large sculptures and paintings inspired by Chilika, Odisha’s famous lake, and the many changes it has gone through over the years.

Mohanty grew up near Chilika and keeps going back to it. He walks along its edges, takes photographs, and spends time with the fishing families who depend on the lake for their living. His sculptures are made from wood and stone he collects from Chilika itself, often shaped into flamingos, the birds that fly back to the lake every year. His paintings capture the same lake through its changing colours, seasons, and moods.

The show gets its name from the way Chilika has been written about for generations. Over a hundred years ago, the Odia poet Radhanath Ray described the lake as beautiful and peaceful. Mohanty’s work looks at Chilika today, when the lake is dealing with sand filling it up, a shifting shoreline, new construction, and growing pressure on both nature and the people who live around it.

So Counter Poetry is both personal and a record of a place that is changing fast. Instead of only showing what is being lost, Mohanty brings together memory, material, and close looking, and asks us to pay attention to a landscape while it is still changing.

“Chilika is not merely a subject for my art; it is a site of ongoing negotiation between individual identities. Through this solo exhibition, I aim to move beyond the romanticised, 19th-century picturesque gaze to confront the lived realities of ecological uncertainties of today.“

— Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty, Visual Artist

For Mohanty, this connection to Chilika is also physical. Every material in his sculptures comes from the lake and the land around it, and his repeated visits and conversations with local communities shape each work. The flamingo keeps appearing across the show, a symbol of migration, return, and the fragile bond between the lake and the life it holds up.

Curator Sibdas Sengupta places the exhibition within a bigger conversation about ecology, development and power: “In the Global South, ecological precarity cannot be separated from historical hierarchies, resource extraction, and the socio-cultural distribution of power. Counter Poetry acts as an atmospheric testimony that challenges Radhanath Ray’s celebrated romantic sanctuary by presenting the lake as a high-stakes arena of hydrological and social conflict.”

Artist and senior curator Premjish Achari, who has worked closely with Mohanty’s practice, adds that Pinaki is not merely a chronicler or illustrator of the plight of the lake. His practice actively questions the politics of aesthetics and interrogates the impacts of the neo liberal economic interventions that have reshaped the landscape. His artworks resurrect forgotten memories by excavating them from these sedimented layers of change and highlight the consequences of human actions.

Monica Jain, Founder and Director of Art Centrix Space, adds: “Pinaki is an artist whose practice has always stayed with me because of his deeply personal relationship with Chilika. Having worked with him since 2020, I have watched his practice evolve over 15 years while remaining distinctly his. There is a quiet persistence in the way he returns to Chilika, gathering its materials, stories, and traces, so that each sculpture carries a small piece of the landscape within it. With Counter Poetry, we are excited to present his first solo exhibition in India.”

At its heart, Counter Poetry is about a place that has been loved and written about for generations, and is now changing fast. Through sculpture and painting, Mohanty brings the beauty of Chilika together with the truth of what it looks like today, asking us to look closely at what the lake has been, what it is becoming, and what can still be saved.

About the Artist

Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty (b. 1986) studied sculpture at B.K. College of Art and Crafts, Bhubaneswar, and ceramic design at Kala Bhavan, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. His work has been exhibited at India Art Fair and Art Mumbai, as well as in group exhibitions across India. In 2022, he received a special grant from the Serendipity Arts Foundation to create a large-scale installation for the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. His works are held in private and institutional collections, including those of Nita Ambani, the Jindal family, the Embassy of Italy and the Constitution Museum at O.P. Jindal Global University.

About the Curator

Sibdas Sengupta is an artist, researcher, writer and curator working across painting, installation and exhibition making. His practice explores the connections between art, craft and history. He is the curator and editor of the Odisha Craft Odyssey and has curated exhibitions including The Long Now of Us, the first solo exhibition of artist Jagannath Panda in Bhubaneswar, and Deep Interiors with Gallery Dotwalk in Hyderabad.