Emami Art announced āranyaka, a poignant solo exhibition by Arunima Choudhury that brings together her recent works on paper and cloth, rendered using eco-printing and natural pigments and Play-Forms, a solo exhibition that celebrates the prolific and multifaceted artistic journey of Partha Pratim Deb, one of India’s most respected contemporary artists and pedagogues.
āranyaka by Arunima Choudhury
āranyaka features Arunima Choudhury’s unique eco prints and other recent works on paper and cloth. A prolific painter and avid gardener, Choudhury’s work reveals her love and anxiety for nature. She crafts intimate natural worlds through her experimental use of colours derived from natural sources, capturing the complexity of our relationship with nature. The exhibition opens on Friday, 27 June 2025, and will remain on view until 9 August 2025 at Emami Art, Kolkata.
Exhibition Details:
Title: āranyaka – Recent Works by Arunima Choudhury
Venue: Emami Art, Ground Floor
Preview: Friday, 27 June 2025
Exhibition Dates: 27 June – 9 August 2025
Deeply informed by Choudhury’s lifelong engagement with the natural world, āranyaka features experimental works that explore themes of survival, decay, and human-nature intimacy. Drawing from her practice as a painter and gardener, Choudhury uses natural materials and direct imprints of leaves and flowers to craft a narrative that moves beyond aesthetic celebration—touching instead on ecological fragility, memory, and ethical discomfort.
Although widely appreciated for its compelling visual presence and organic feel, Choudhury’s art does not primarily describe or celebrate nature’s physical beauty or protest; instead, she paints to tell stories about nature that are not always traditional narratives, but explorations of thoughts, memories, ethical discomforts or despair – that intertwine body and desires with broader social and political contexts.
Born in 1950 In Siliguri, West Bengal, Arunima Choudhury holds a Diploma in Fine Arts from Indian College of Arts & Draftsmanship, Kolkata, 1974, and a Certificate in Graphic Design & Mass Communication from Chitrabani, Kolkata, 1978. Working primarily with natural colours on handmade paper, she is known for her works depicting the languid world of nature and human beings, their intimacy and coexistence.
Play- forms by Partha Pratim Deb
Play-Forms Emami Art’s solo exhibition of Partha Pratim Deb showcases his distinctive works created over the last two decades. The exhibition includes his vibrant paintings, expressive drawings, playful paper mesh and fabric objects that blur the line between toy and sculpture. Trained at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, and MS University, Baroda, in the 1960s, Deb absorbed the essence of both institutions and gradually forged his own highly experimental and unconventional path, diverging from the narrative-figurative and abstract art trends of his time.
Opening on Friday, 27 June 2025, the exhibition will be on view until 9 August 2025 at Emami Art, Kolkata. It brings together his vibrant recent paintings, drawings, and rarely shown fabric sculptures, blurring the line between toy and sculpture, and marked by a compelling mix of criticality, play, and visual delight.
Exhibition Details:
Title: Play-Forms: Recent Works by Partha Pratim Deb
Venue: Emami Art, Ground Floor
Preview: Friday, 27 June 2025
Exhibition Dates: 27 June – 9 August 2025
Play-Forms offers a window into Deb’s recent creative explorations, including playful objects crafted from fabric and paper mesh that question notions of form, scale, and functionality. These works are engaging, tactile, and philosophical, reflecting his lifelong interest in bridging the imaginative and the intellectual.
His work embodies a complex blend of criticality and creativity, reflecting on the ideology and meaning of art while embracing the magic and pleasure of creating it. With a career spanning over six decades, Partha Pratim Deb has produced a vast and diverse body of work. This exhibition presents his recent drawings, paintings, and, most significantly, his not-so-widely-shown fabric sculptures, representing his late style.
Partha Pratim Deb was born in 1943 in Sylhet District, now in Bangladesh, to a mathematician father. He received private training in painting from renowned artist Shailesh Chandra Deb Barma, a disciple of Nandalal Bose. Deb later studied fine arts at Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, and MS University, Baroda. As a distinguished teacher, he taught painting at Rabindra Bharati University for over three decades, retiring as the Dean of the Faculty of Visual Arts in 2005. Deb has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including “Gestures” at Emami Art Gallery, Kolkata (2020); Aicon Gallery, New York (2006); “Play for Joy of Seeing” at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata (2006); Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata (1997); and Academy of Fine Arts (1974, 1976, 1978).
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