A new group exhibition titled 'An Ancient Ballad' opens at Emami Art in Kolkata on 22 May 2026, bringing together 12 artists across generations. The show examines recurring motifs of nature, the human body, and animal forms in modern and contemporary art through photography, painting, printmaking, textile, ceramics, and sculpture. Historical works by L. M. Sen and K. C. Pyne are displayed alongside contemporary artists including Arunima Choudhury, Ajit Kumar Das, Alakananda Sengupta, Raja Boro, and Rahul Sarkar, creating an intergenerational dialogue on memory, mythology, and lived experience.
The exhibition matters because it reframes repetition in art not as stagnation but as transformation, highlighting how familiar visual forms acquire new meanings in changing material, social, and ecological contexts. By juxtaposing early 20th-century photography with recent eco-printed textiles and naturally dyed kalamkari cloths, the show underscores the enduring relevance of craft, labor, and environmental memory in contemporary practice. It also reinforces Emami Art's role as a platform for historically grounded yet forward-looking curation in Kolkata's growing art scene.