Prafulla Mohanti: Full Circle – Curated by Amber Li

Prafulla Mohanti: Full Circle is an exhibition curated by Future Collect Curatorial Trainee Amber Li who has been conducting new research focused on work by artists of African, Caribbean, Asian or MENA heritage within Wakefield’s art collection.

On display are paintings, textiles, and performance works by Prafulla Mohanti (b. 1936, in Odisha, India) that span six decades. The exhibition explores the enduring importance of circles and movement within the artist’s work. As a child growing up in Nanpur, a small village in Odisha, Mohanti was taught to draw three circles to represent the Hindu trinity – Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Mahesh (the destroyer) – responsible for the endless cycle of creation and destruction. For Mohanti, the circle is ‘absolute abstraction’, both void and container of everything. Mohanti’s first UK exhibition was in Wakefield in 1964, as part of a show called Modern Art in Yorkshire. This is the first time Mohanti’s work has been shown in Wakefield since then.

Future Collect is iniva’s national partnership programme designed to diversify who is collected by, who works at and who goes to the museum with the aim of better reflecting the breadth of contemporary British society. Each year, iniva partners with one public museum or gallery to commission an artist of African and/or Asian descent, British born or based. The artwork created is exhibited by the partner organisation, presented alongside a bespoke public programme, and subsequently acquired into the museum or gallery’s permanent public collection. The project also supports significant curatorial development in the form of a curatorial traineeship.

Download the full press release here: Future Collect press release, April 2022

Future Collect is generously supported by Art Fund, Arts Council England and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. 

Image courtesy of The Hepworth Wakefield.