Sohrab Hura’s twin exhibitions in Kolkata show his artistic range and image perception

With a double opening of his artworks and photographs, one can, not just see the diverse range of interpretation by Delhi-based artist Sohrab Hura but also soak in the various perceptions about memory, identity, and metaphors hidden in seemingly everyday instances captured through art.

Under the thick foliage

The Forest, exhibited at Experimenter – Ballygunge Place spans over five galleries comprising paintings, installations and a film. Hura focuses on the socio-economic, emotional and the political through everyday ordinariness in his works. Upon entering the gallery, the first body of work is clubbed together under Disappeared and The Forest. While many of the paintings depict loss and separation, the India debut of his film Disappeared is a distorted shot of a forest tent and as time progresses one can feel the malleability of perspective through distance.

The rest of the three galleries include works under Ghosts in My Sleep, The Forest, Things Felt but not quite expressed and Timelines. What sets his works apart are the titles being hand-written on the walls of the gallery, a feat which makes it more humane and closer to the viewer. Colourful, layered, and rooted in simplicity, each of the frames has multiple stories.

While a portrait of my father as a young man makes us stop and ponder about the youth of our parents; Fireflies, takes us back to a canvas which reminds one of Van Gogh’s palette; and a painting like Sunday Mornings is all about capturing the laziness to get up from the bed, not only for the humans but also the furry companions who also like to take it slow. Hura states, “I need the forest to escape to which gives me physical distance from the works that I have made. A lot of my work actually happens there, in the non-physical realm.”

Out-of-the-box

But what draws attention to itself is the floor installation right in the middle of the gallery made with painted cardboard boxes called Timelines. These boxes aren’t new to us, given that the world majorly survives on deliveries today. But what gives them Hura’s touch is exploring their many outlets. Each box can be opened on the top, through the bottom, sideways etc. And each face has a painting on it. Arrange the flaps as you wish and a new narrative gets formed. This is Hura’s way of introducing one to the multiple truths or identities that exist and portray parallelism.

The two sides of barrenness

A Winter Summer, a display of Sohrab’s photograph series presented by Experimenter at the Alipore Museum not only depicts his versatility as an artist but also people, places and spaces through two different seasons. The snowstorms, snow-covered roads, the river, and colourful buds on trees against the sky taken during the three layers of cold in Kashmir in Snow emphasizes on the emptiness, the longing, the lost childhood, the memories and the constant tension in which one survives in the place. While on a personal visit to Kashmir, he saw the landscape change overnight when Article 370 was revoked and a siege ensued. A photograph of chicken eyes on the table is metaphorical to the pellets shot at children and adults alike, some even penetrating their eyes. Hura mentions, “I never went back to Kashmir, quite deliberately because it lost meaning overnight as the whole landscape shifted.”

Another series of photographs were taken around 2013 called The Song of sparrows in a hundred days of summer. Taken in Savariyapani, Barwani, Madhya Pradesh, the photographs are everything we know of summer – the scorching heat, the barrenness, the afternoon siesta, the cool relief when swimming in the ponds and much more. Hura says, ‘‘I was looking at two different socio-economic and political landscapes through different seasons. As a storyteller what interests me is how to look at a subject that people are aware of, in a different way. It also allows me to talk about the passage or stillness of time.”

He signs off by saying, “There is no difference for me between the two [paintings and photography]. I think it’s nice to have the exhibitions run parallel. For me it’s about the image, gestures, and tones that I’m interested in. Often we have been expected to stay with one language or identity, but I feel that human beings have multiple lives at the same time and I’m glad it can be reflected to some degree between the two shows.”

The Forest is until Jan 3, 2026 at Experimenter- Ballygunge Place and A Winter Summer is until Dec 6, 2025 at Alipore Museum.

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