How cow urine became an unlikely ingredient in art and photography
The histories of Indian yellow and Bengal light reveal how colonial science and empire intersected with visual culture.
Vijay Singh Mohite: Inexorable Pulsations | Gallery Prologue | 8 Jan - 22 Feb
I was the curatorial advisor and catalogue writer for an exhibition of works by a late Gwalior-based abstract artist who, in his lifetime, only exhibited for a brief period in the 1970s.
From dust to digital: The quest to preserve India’s bazaar art
An ambitious project is digitising Priya Paul’s art collection, preserving vintage ads, cinema posters and more for future generations.
Cantus Firmus: Notes on Listening to Jangarh Singh Shyam
“The earth calls out, ‘Tell me Raja, why are you leaving me? You will never find such love in the city as you have found in your village!’”— Jangarh Singh Shyam
Geeta Kapur’s Speech Acts Reimagines Modernism for Our Times - The Wire
Attuned to India’s descent into Hindutva and neoliberalism since the 1980s, Kapur situates cultural production in an era of saffron capitalism
Unbroken Cord
With her otherworldly textile art, Mrinalini Mukherjee united modernism and South Asian folk traditions. Kamayani Sharma explores the strands of Mukherjee’s career ahead
of an RA show on the artist and her circle.
of an RA show on the artist and her circle.
Listening In and Finding Balance
Dispatch from the Pro Helvetia x TAKE On Art Art Writers' Award residency 2025
A Counter-Aesthetic: The Art of Vikrant Bhise
A longform essay on the aesthetics and politics of artist Vikrant Bhise.
On Process at the Chennai Photo Biennale
Interviews with creators/ curators behind five projects at Chennai Photo Biennale 2024, focussing on the histories and fundamentals of the photographic process they engaged with.
H for Hate
A book review of 'H Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars' by Kunal Purohit.
Artists take the farmlands into the gallery
A new generation of artists is countering exploitative models of agriculture and creating works of art that embody care for the land and justice for the farmers.
How a British suffragist brought Ajanta’s ancient paintings into the light of modernity
Christiana Herringham led a historic project, involving some of India’s greatest artists, to copy Ajanta images so that they could be taken to the world.
A century on, Begum Rokeya’s feminist science fiction is still inspiring Indian artists
Rokeya’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ critiques the present not only by evoking a seemingly impossible future but by revealing how the past persists and prevails.
A pioneer of performance art in India reflects on her decades-long journey
For years, Ratnabali Kant responded to political, economic and social transformations by synthesising performance and installation. Now she looks back.
A painting of Akbar in a drunken brawl is a history lesson in manliness and kingship
The miniature from ‘Akbarnama’ deviates from the text of the biography to present a badshah who has control over the body physic and politic.
Why is Surya the only god in the Brahmanic pantheon to wear high boots?
The sun god’s induction into the Buddhist religio-cultural sphere led to his transformed aspect.
Why these travel posters sparked a fiery debate between Indian and British legislators in the 1930s
As anticolonial sentiment and nationalist confidence grew under the Raj, a series of promotional posters became a fleeting but intense locus of contention.
What a regal South Indian ornament in a famous Rossetti painting tells us about the British Raj
The bracelet worn by the central figure in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘The Beloved’ (1865) embodies the traffic between Britain and the jewel in its Crown.
After seeing Mysore art in a gallery, one man has spent his whole life collecting and conserving it
Possessing a collection of 600 Mysore paintings, RG Singh’s passion project, the Ramsingh Museum, provides a synoptic view of a distinctive regional style.
Arshi Ahmadzai's publication 'Nafas: Isolation Diaries'.
Book review
A 19th-century Indian queen’s photographic work has been obscured by history
From this distance, it is hard to define Maharani Manmohini’s contributions in the photo studio: was she her husband’s collaborator or assistant?
How did an Italian prisoner of war end up painting these beautiful frescoes in a Dehradun church?
Nino La Civita’s rollercoaster life in India took him from the mansions of the rich to internment camps to finally the St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church.
Please touch: Indian art is finally growing sensitive to the needs of the visually impaired
Museums as well as galleries are displaying tactile panels to make art accessible to people with disabilities.
An Indian artist who helped decolonise Christian art has been relegated to the margins in death
Trindade’s stylistic trajectory over the decades loosely paralleled shifts in Indian modernism.
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