If you close your eyes, and think about ‘art’, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Aesthetics, home decor, wall hangings, a gallery, or MF Husain, perhaps?
Art has always meant different things to different people. For those who take a keen interest in it, art can be a muse. For others, who might be bogged down by the weight of everyday life, art can mean respite. For someone “obsessed” with Pinterest, as the kids these days say, art can mean buying a statement piece for their living room that brings the space together.
But art, while catering to an individual’s mind and soul, has always served a higher purpose too. Henri Matisse, the French visual artist (1869-1954), had once said, “Creativity takes courage.” This couldn’t be truer—especially in the times that we live in when a lot of art and artists are curtailed by censorship, fear of being incarcerated, or just afraid of being seen as ruffling the wrong feathers.
However, when an artist does have the strength to actually let the times we live in be their muse, the work they create stands the test of time and has much more of a resonance with audiences. This is perhaps why (or maybe it’s the times we live in that are to blame), we’re seeing a lot more artists trigger critical and crucial conversations through their work—be it about politics, gender, climate crisis, or agonies of the post-internet age.
Inner reflections
Interestingly, though, when you speak to artists about their most political works, the inspiration is often simply their own lives. Take, for instance, Debashish Paul, a Banaras-based multidisciplinary contemporary sculptor and performance artist, who recently held his first solo exhibition titled A Thousand Years of Dreaming at the Emami Art Gallery in Kolkata.
Paul’s work explores “queer desires and identities within the socio-political landscape of small towns.” But, as he tells FE, “For me, my art is a reflection of my childhood experiences of growing up in a homophobic society where I was not allowed to put forth my opinions.”
“I use art as a medium of expression for myself and my own experiences as a queer person. I use it to talk about the pain of identity-based discrimination and the suppression and oppression that every queer person has felt in this conservative society, which is why my art becomes political,” says Paul.
Similar is the story of Prague-based artist Nitish Jain’s sensory piece titled Shahi Tukra that he brought to the Serendipity Arts Festival (held annually in Goa) in 2024. It was Jain’s own experiences, observations, and innermost thoughts and debates that he brought to the fore. Essentially, to experience his work, the spectator was blindfolded and made to feel through their other senses, while the performance itself revoked a nostalgia of maternal love and tenderness. The piece, though inherently political through its very act of existing, was pushing the spectator to reflect on their own lives too. Says Jain, “In the past few years, every time I’ve visited India, I’ve witnessed an excessive audio-visual culture all around. We are trying to make everything a spectacle, but what we really need is to sit with our intimate thoughts, to reflect on how we feel, what we’re seeing, and what we’re hearing.”
“At a time when the world is so divisive and even caregiving has become a political act, through my piece, I wanted to create moments of rest in a fast-paced, capitalistic society, post the age of internet where leisure is considered a failure. Especially when you have someone like a (Narayana) Murthy talking about a 70-hour work week, rest becomes a radical act. So, I wanted to create a space for empathy and tenderness, not just for humans, but for our planet as well,” adds Jain.
On a similar spectrum, but with a different storytelling experience, we also have Sriparna Dutta, who lives between New Delhi and Kolkata, and recently showcased her artwork titled Threaded Souls, Silent Stories at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata. Dutta’s piece explores the lives of marginalised women, throttled down by patriarchy. She says, “I created it while working with the marginalised Santhal community in Jarkadanga village, Birbhum, near Shantiniketan. I was interested in understanding how patriarchy has overpowered a historically matriarchal culture in today’s time.”
Dutta says she delves on such subjects because she feels a certain responsibility towards her community. “Through my artistic practice, I created a space where these vulnerable, marginalised voices will be validated—a platform where their hidden, overlooked, shadowed realities will be shared, and people will start giving them importance,” she adds.
Under the weather
The climate crisis is also something that a lot of artists want to shed light on through their work—to emphasise that it’s not something that could potentially ruin our futures, but something that’s already impacting our lives in the present day and age.
In February, while the India Art Fair (IAF) was in full swing in Delhi, the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) organised the second edition of Sustaina India in collaboration with artist duo Thukral and Tagra. Climate and sustainability were at the centre of this exhibit.
Shubhi Sachan, a Sustaina India fellow, showcased an interactive art installation through which she proposed alternative waste disposal methods and highlighted ‘material literacy’. She says, “Through my exhibit, I tried to introduce the audience to the critical aspects of waste segregation and highlight the importance of knowing regional, seasonal, and original materials.”
She explains, “India generates 1.7 lakh tonne of waste per day, most of which is not recycled or segregated properly. By integrating on-ground research and design thinking, the piece speaks of materials and their life cycles, aiming to transform how communities think about consumption and waste. Art has the ability to make complex conversations more abstract or, at times, more approachable, even when they require deep systemic thinking.”
Delhi-based award-winning visual artist Deepak Kumar agrees with what Sachan has to say. As part of IAF, he showcased his work titled Garuda: The Silent Flight at Exhibit 320, which talked about the predicament of the environment by showing a sculpture of an eagle with a broken wing, reminiscent of Garuda (the mythological bird in the Ramayana).
For Kumar, it was important to reflect on the “tragic intersection of urban development and the vulnerability of wildlife”. “For the past seven years, I have observed the devastating impact of electric wires and transformers on bird populations, particularly eagles, in urban landscapes. Structures that symbolise progress have instead become silent traps for creatures that once soared freely,” he says.
But it’s also interesting to see artists go beyond just the boxed perception of climate change. At the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, another exhibit that caught a lot of eyeballs was Copenhagen-based food artist Priya Mani’s work titled A Visual Encyclopedia of Indian Foods. What started out as a documentation of food and ingredients on her Instagram page, under the username @cookalore, turned into an exhaustive work that encompasses climate and sustainability.
Mani tells FE, “This encyclopedia hopes to spread knowledge of indigenous ingredients, communal foodways and with its visual focus, hopes to bring equity at the table. A visual approach helps unshackle the stereotypes of Indian food. It democratises the food narrative in a digital platform to cut through biases of economic disparity, religion and caste. By looking at ingredients, food is in its core essence, like materials in art, and so can become a medium of expression.”
While she was showcasing her work at the festival, Mani interspersed “the farm and the farmer involved in various stages of processing”, while also sharing an insight into food being cooked in her kitchen. That juxtaposition, she says, impacted her audience the most. “Climate consciousness is at the centre of my work. Imagine, looking at workers amongst large expanses of chillies, drying in fields till where your eyes can see, and then looking deep into a single micro-droplet of chilli oil in a curry. The farm is on your plate, you just need to see it!” says Mani. Her mantra is what a lot of other artists would relate to in their respective subjects too—that “food is political, but with an artistic outreach it can be empowering too.”
On your own terms
For many artists, art is also a medium to come to terms with their own roots and culture. At least Paul strongly feels so. Having grown up in West Bengal’s Nadia, he was often the centre of jokes due to his “feminine nature”. “I used to be lonely, afraid to step out, fearing that people would pass comments about me. But performance art helped me feel comfortable in my own body and talk about and express desire without feeling guilty about it. Art is a need for me now. Before this, I felt I was chained down by the pain of identity, feeling like I was carrying the pain that every queer person has felt before me for thousands of years. Art helps me come to terms with that,” he says.
Kumar deeply resonates with this. Growing up amid nature in Bihar—surrounded by birds, insects, and agricultural landscapes—and now living in the severely polluted Delhi for the past 11 years, the air and environmental crisis became his catalyst to create art.
For him, then, art becomes a “way to archive this loss, to bear witness to the irreversible changes happening around us,” he says. Kumar sighs and goes on, “By documenting and reinterpreting these losses, I hope to create a visual dialogue that urges people to reconsider our impact on the environment. Art has the power to challenge, provoke, and bring awareness to urgent issues.”
“My work is not just about aesthetics; it is an act of documentation, a way to create a discourse on the environmental crisis we are facing. Through my practice, I aim to make viewers pause and reflect on the irreversible damage we are causing. If my work can evoke even a moment of empathy or inspire a shift in perception, then I believe it has served its purpose,” says Kumar.
Fears & adulations
Courageous creativity, though, comes with its own baggage.
Like in Jain’s case, though his piece was conceptualised long ago and he performed multiple iterations of it abroad, Serendipity was the first time he brought his work to India. He confesses, “I have been scared and reluctant to bring my work to India before because of the political climate, and because I didn’t know how people would react to it. The idea of intimacy, of tenderness, of one-to-one contact in which the spectator is blindfolded can be perceived negatively. I was so happy to be proved wrong though.”
However, for galleries too, the idea increasingly is to go beyond aesthetics and help the narrative focus on the raging issues of our times.
This is something that Rasika Kajaria, gallerist, Exhibit 320 in Delhi, strongly believes in. She tells FE, “Galleries are crucial spaces for artists to express their thoughts, especially in contemporary art, responding to the socio-political and ecological realities of today.”
On the other hand, Uma Ray, curator at Kolkata’s Birla Academy of Art and Culture, fully agrees on the importance of hearing out young artists and understanding their practice informed by their experiences. “The need for dialogue and open conversations must be highlighted here. The role of institutions and organisations that enable such open exchanges is crucial and one filled with responsibility. It is imperative to support artists and individuals who engage, question and deliberate through their work—based on well-grounded reasoning and critical thinking; and free from predispositions—and must be encouraged today more than ever,” she says.
And are there any particular issues or subjects that galleries pick up or refrain from? Not necessarily, comes the answer. For Kajaria, climate is a pressing concern. She says, “Living in a rapidly urbanising world, particularly in a city like Delhi where climate change and pollution are pressing concerns, these discussions become even more significant. Art allows for these conversations to unfold, even in times when censorship is a challenge. It remains essential that such platforms continue to exist, giving voice to the issues that shape our world.”
This also rings a bell with Milan George Jacob, a communications specialist at CEEW and Sustaina India’s organiser. He believes that it’s crucial to encourage dialogue on climate action, and to ensure that any narratives around the climate are grounded in science and data. “Art serves as an effective medium to help people envision a sustainable future,” says Jacob.
Why these conversations also become important is because when something feels real and relatable to the audiences, it’s something that they take beyond the four walls of the gallery and see it having an impact on their lives, says Jain.
Interestingly, there are multiple ways artists employ their work to reach this effect. For Thukral and Tagra (comprising Delhi-based artist duo Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra), the idea of public engagement is to make the audience a part of the process—fill them in on how the work took shape from where it was to its final outcome. The process then becomes art too— a sentiment rooted in authenticity.
Says the artist duo, “We think artistic pursuit is filled by arguments against the current. Art is the only respite to question what is happening.”
But what does it take to make art of courage, and how do galleries navigate such pieces? “Organising an art exhibition on socio-political themes demands intellectual engagement and meticulous planning. Given the sensitive nature of socio-political art, it’s crucial to navigate cultural and political nuances, respecting diverse viewpoints while faithfully representing the artist’s message,” Kajaria says.
“Occasionally, this involves consulting community stakeholders or experts to anticipate and address potential concerns. The primary goal is to effectively convey the exhibition’s core message that fosters the connection between the artwork and the audience, with the aim to prompt reflection and dialogue on the issues presented,” adds Kajaria.