Umrana Niyazi hunkers down in her small verandah with her paan daan (betel leaf box) and sings Chhap tilak sab cheeni… mohse naina milaike (You have taken away my identity, my beauty, and everything that was mine… just by locking eyes with me), written and composed by Sufi poet and mystic Hazrat Amir Khusrau in braj bhasha, a western Hindi […]
Artist Palaniappan | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT At Dhan Mill, Nature Morte’s unveiling of Rm Palaniappan’s Finite and Infinite is an odyssey of the poetry of light and lines against his sparse abstract renditions that echo an artistic practice born of a domain immersed in abstraction. Palaniappan who was former Secretary Lalit Kala Akademi was an astute administrator […]
Aazhi – The Deep Sea | Photo Credit: Sangita Rajan A few weeks ago, Chennai saw the season’s hatch of Olive Ridley baby turtles. The hatchlings slowly made their way into the sea, as people gathered to watch them. These turtle walks are recorded along the East Coast each year. Under natural conditions, the eggs […]
Senior artist M. Senathipathi at Cholamandal art village on Friday. | Photo Credit: Akhila Easwaran The many worlds of Manickam Senathipathi’s artistic journey came to a profoundly moving trajectory in the last canvas he painted at the Artists Village of Cholamandal on Saturday, May 10, 2025. He called it ‘Christ’, symbolising perhaps the recent elevation […]
Tyeb Mehta’s Untitled (Diagonal); Oil on canvas; 1973; 70 x 60 inches | Photo Credit: Special arrangement The record-breaking sale of Indian modern artworks in recent years — given Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (₹61.8 crore) in 2023 and MF Husain’s Gram Yatra (₹118 crore) this year — puts the country’s modern artists on a […]
Sudhir Patwardhan’s art has always centred Mumbai’s working class. | Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini Giant arcs of metal and concrete dominate the landscape. Skyscrapers with sea views have balcony seats to the excavation of Mumbai’s soul. As three figures from the Holocaust gaze silently into the city’s bowels where a grave of bodies lies forgotten […]
Couple by Siddharth Shingade | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement While most artists have a signature style, they also evolve and grow in their manner of expression. Well, it is expected of them, to say the least. Patrons of artist Siddharth Shingade will be glad to see his prowess unfold in his latest exhibition, Ephemeral Homelands, […]
Over centuries, thread has been an instrument to sew, mend, darn, embellish and create. We female artists are much like individual threads in the fabric of a society’s culture — seen but not noticed. But once you notice us, you will see us everywhere.” This message at the entrance to the ongoing exhibition titled The […]
A peacock with a disoriented gaze, a blue poison dart frog from the Amazon struggling to reproduce, and migratory birds and blossoms disrupted by shifting climate patterns — Satadru Sovan Banduri’s acrylic and gouache paintings, on display in Hyderabad, strike a deeply emotional chord. In his ongoing exhibition Disappearing Echoes of the Isolated at Kalakriti […]
One of Vivek Vilasini’s works | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT The curatorial note for Waiting Room, the show curated by Shruti Sainani, on at Gallery 21, Fort Kochi, delved into what constitutes identity, which grapples with time, space, gender and a host of other factors. The curator has tried to present that complex thing called […]
