Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty brings Chilika Lake’s changing ecology to a Delhi gallery

A sculpture made from compressed seashells, green plastic debris and fishnets sits at the centre of Pinaki Ranjan Mohanty’s first solo exhibition in India, **Counter Poetry**, now open at Art Centrix Space in New Delhi.

The Bhubaneswar-based sculptor and painter turns to Chilika Lake, Asia’s largest brackish lagoon, for works that trace changing channels, pollution and land pressures around the waterbody. Mohanty collects timber washed ashore during pre-monsoon storms, carving it into migratory flamingos, while other sculptures combine lakebed stone with iron, bronze, broken shells and discarded plastic.

His oil canvases follow Chilika from dawn to dusk, with wading buffalo, fishermen casting circular nets and the lagoon’s shifting tides. The exhibition’s title responds to Odia poet Radhanath Ray’s earlier romantic vision of Chilika, setting it against Mohanty’s account of a landscape affected by highway blasting, silt and microplastics.

Counter Poetry is curated by Sibdas Sengupta and runs until November 20.