Sohini Banerjee’s ‘Visage’ spotlights human face in all its endurance

Revisiting the human face not as a portrait but as a sustained meditation on recognition and beauty, Sohini Banerjee on Friday unveiled her solo exhibit of paintings at the All India Fine Art and Crafts Society (AIFACS) here, presenting more than five years of artistic practice.

The inaugural ceremony was presided over by Padmashree Biman B Das, who opened the exhibition to the public. The exhibition will offer insights into artists’ impressions of the most familiar and yet most elusive subject: the human countenance.

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Through a seven-day exhibit commencing on November 15, Banerjee has brought to life her belief that “beauty is not a fixed ideal; it is an event that occurs in the act of looking.”

Rapturing the audience with the everyday unfolding of city life, putting to use oil on canvas, she showcases how faces took prominence during her travels. “The markets of Kenya, the lanes of Rajasthan, the coastlines of Thailand, the hills of China, and the riverine Sunderbans all appear as whispers behind the faces,” said Banerjee.

She translates her encounters into pigment, where beauty is no longer about symmetry or perfection but becomes temperament. In her paintings, every face tells a story — faces that have survived hardship, the tenderness of a mother and child, the dignity of labour, the glow of faith, the weariness of the patriarch, the careworn gaze of the comrade, and the quiet fatigue of resilience.

The portraits painted by Banerjee are not linked by origin but by radiance — faces of ordinary people in extraordinary acts of endurance. Through her canvas, she offered a peek into her training, engaging with diverse communities during international travels, showcasing her expertise to see value in the ordinary: in wrinkles, rough hands, imperfect symmetry.

As the exhibition progresses, the faces begin to merge with other forms: masks, vessels, animals, fragments of myth. Beauty becomes plural, shape-shifting. In the pen-and-ink drawings and the small still lives that close the show, Banerjee’s vision dissolves into the discovery of faces in objects.

A broken jar becomes a portrait of resilience; a cat’s expression hints at amused wisdom, and sunlight itself appears to smile. Here, the art is no longer in the subject but in perception itself, in the capacity to find the human in the inanimate.