India: Many Modernisms

Indian modern art did not emerge from a single centre, style, or ideology. Instead, it evolved through multiple, parallel modernisms shaped by region, material, belief systems, and individual artistic inquiry. This exhibition brings together artists from across India to foreground these coexisting approaches, challenging the idea of a singular narrative of Indian modernism.

The first section, The Figure and the Nation, examines how artists engaged with the human form to reflect social realities, political consciousness, and post-Independence identities. In Abstraction as Inner Geography, modernism unfolds as a philosophical and spiritual pursuit, where form, colour, and symbol become vehicles for inner states and metaphysical reflection. Material, Object, and the Body expands modernism beyond the painted surface, exploring sculptural, industrial, and spatial practices that respond to changing urban and material conditions. The final section, Folk, Memory, and the Living Past, highlights artists who drew from indigenous, tribal, and vernacular traditions, not as nostalgia but as living knowledge systems shaping contemporary expression.

Together, these four strands reveal Indian modern art as a field of diverse yet interconnected practices. Rather than presenting a unified aesthetic, the exhibition maps a constellation of artistic languages that collectively define the richness and complexity of modern art in India.