Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty’s Counter Poetry explores the changing ecology of Chilika Lake

For Bhubaneswar-based artist Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty, Lake Chilika is far more than a scenic backdrop. It is the core of his identity. In his debut solo exhibition in India, Counter Poetry, curated by Sibdas Sengupta at Art Centrix Space in New Delhi, the 40-year-old sculptor and painter presents a deeply personal record of Asia’s largest brackish lagoon.

Bringing together large-scale mixed-media sculptures and expansive oil canvases, the show examines the ecological shift, land politics, and environmental decay reshaping Chilika today. “Chilika is the source of energy in my body. If there is no Chilika, I am not there.

I am an artist, but I am Chilika first. 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,” says the artist. The exhibition takes its name from a dialogue across time with legendary Odia poet Radhanath Ray, who over a century ago romanticised Chilika in verse.