Immerse in this new art exhibition tracing their life and times of artist Shanu Lahiri

At artist Shanu Lahirirsquos dining table stories were always in the making The table connected her kitchen to her studio where food art friends and conversation flowed freely Her pets wandered around the room guests gathered at the table and Lahiri continued to sketch even while talking It was also around this very table that the team behind her upcoming retrospective spent years documenting and archiving her lifeNow those stories are finding their way to Mumbai Stories that never end Journeying with Shanu Lahiri curated by art historian Tapati GuhaThakurta and Nobina Gupta looks beyond the artistrsquos paintings to recreate the world she inhabited Alongside artworks the exhibition will feature archival materials such as sketches scrapbooks photographs writings exhibition catalogues and personal objects offering visitors a glimpse into Lahiri as an artist writer teacher publicart practitioner cook and hostShanu Lahiri was the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Rabindra Bharati UniversityldquoThe idea of an inheritance of stories is centralrdquo says GuhaThakurta who knew Lahiri over a long period ldquoThe project came to life around a continuous flow of storiesrdquo She recalls how every visit to Lahirirsquos home would bring a new anecdote ldquoMany of us have memories of her sitting at the very table where we would all congregate and work which is a dining table that always converts into a work tablerdquoShanu Lahiri at work on a public wall near Sealdah station in Kolkata in 1998Lahirirsquos life was as expansive as her artistic practice She was among the first generation of women to study at the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata graduating in 1951 She later travelled to Paris with her young child on a French government scholarship where she studied at Academie Julian and Ecole du Louvre Over the decades she developed a distinct modernist style drawing from European influences while remaining rooted in Indian myths folklore city life and everyday experiencesThe exhibition traces these many shifts through works from the 1970s to the 2000s Visitors will encounter her Ragmala paintings inspired by music and miniature traditions alongside works from series such as RavanSita and Elokeshi Her paintings also explore themes of women and violence while her affection for animals and the morethanhuman world appears throughout her workTapati GuhaThakurta and Nobina GuptaldquoThere are multiple layers in her paintings which one can keep looking beyond and looking withinrdquo says Gupta ldquoHer work inspires us to think that this is not a person who limits herself within a framework but tries to see how hierarchies could be brokenrdquoIn 1982 she began ambitious publicart projects on the streets of Kolkata working with art students workers and members of local communities The same year she helped establish The Group a pioneering womenrsquos art collective She also taught at Rabindra Bharati University and later became Dean of its Faculty of Fine Arts ldquoArt doesnrsquot need to be on a pedestal and doesnrsquot need to be distant from peoplerdquo Gupta says ldquoShe took art as a medium of bringing people togetherrdquoUntitled oil on canvas 40x29rdquo undated unsignedWhile Lahirirsquos public work was often temporary the exhibition attempts to reconstruct this part of her practice through photographs layouts sketches and archival material The show will also recreate aspects of her studio allowing visitors to see the many ways in which she worked Lahirirsquos hands it seems were rarely still ldquoShe drew on invitation cards newspaper scraps envelopes and whatever paper she found around the house Some of these small spontaneous works will be displayed on a process wallrdquo Gupta saysFor GuhaThakurta the exhibition is also an invitation to revisit a chapter of Indian modern art that may be unfamiliar to Mumbai audiences ldquoItrsquos a challenge to present an artist whorsquos not known at all really in Mumbairdquo she says While Lahirirsquos work continues to feel contemporary the exhibition also places her within the artistic and social world of the 1960s rsquo70s rsquo80s and rsquo90sVisitors may come for the paintings but they will leave with a sense of the prolific artist who turned her home into a cultural gathering took art to the streets and continued creating until the end of her life There will be large paintings and intimate sketches myths and animals public art and personal memories And somewhere among them all the stories will continue