Ananya Sikand: Today we’re joined by Rajyashri Goody, who will present her artistic practice and long-term research on the interweaving of Dalit food culture and Dalit literature adapting recipes from autobiographies. These recipes serve as the backbone of her work across ceramics, installation, photography, printmaking, and performance.

Food is an important site of memory, resistance, resilience as well as a form of embodied politics, because among the many reasons that the Hindu caste system has such deep roots is that rules related to adhering to caste have been applied to basic activities necessary for survival such as eating and drinking, which are bound up in casteist notions of purity and pollution. Dalit people have been treated as untouchable and impure for thousands of years, and many are still denied basic rights to food, water, land, and literacy. Rajyashri’s work highlights how Dalit identity is being reclaimed and reinvented through acts of everyday resistance, especially relevant in the present moment given the rise of Hindu nationalism, which promotes the upholding of casteist values, vigilantism, and violence against minority communities in the name of religion.

Rajyashri’s work is presently part of the Post-National Digital Pavilion, a program developed by the Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva) in collaboration with the British Council at the 61st Venice Biennale.

Rajyashri Goody: I want to begin with the recipes (fig. 1) that I work on, an ongoing practice since 2017. I started my research in 2016, when many parts of India were seeing a lot of lynchings based on the suspicion of eating or transporting beef. At the time, Muslim and Dalit people were targeted, accused of eating beef, and then publicly attacked. Simultaneously, there were many protests. One, in particular, led by lower-caste people in a village called Una in Gujarat centered on their refusal to pick up dead animals, a job forced on this community because of their lower-caste and “untouchable” status. Across India, Dalit people are forced to take on the role of sanitation workers, which includes disposing of carcasses of dead animals. Dead cows have been a major source of food for the community because, historically, Dalit people haven’t been allowed to own land, much less grow their own crops, etc. Today, many Dalit people are resisting these jobs, but it’s very difficult because no other caste wants to undertake them. Dalit people, even if they’re going to school, etc., are forced by the system to take on such labor. I read, about 10 years ago, that all the sanitation workers in India are Dalit and that no other communities are involved in this work. As all of this was happening in 2016, I started thinking about my own food practices—given my mother belongs to this community—and asked myself: What do we eat as Dalit people?

My family doesn’t eat beef because we became Buddhist in the 1950s, like a lot of Dalit people. In embracing Buddhism, we gave up eating meat in general—and especially beef because of its connection with sanitation work. But I asked myself, What if I’m eating vegetarian food? Does that then become Dalit? What about if I share food with an upper-caste person? What about the food makes it upper-caste or makes it polluted—as is thought to happen if a Dalit person shares food with an upper-caste person. 

I’ll read a recipe from my writing called “Well Water”

Although the well
belongs to the Patils,
the spades and the shovels, 
the sweat,
the explosives 
of the Mahars 
were used to dig and build it.
You are the reason 
for water in the well.

But now you are not allowed 
to draw water from it.
If you are walking by
feeling tired and thirsty
go down the well 
to drink water
while your friends keep watch.
Make sure no one sees you.
Otherwise you might be badly beaten.

Quench your thirst 
furtively.

Touch the water.
Gather it in your cupped palms.
Ripples might form on the surface.
The water inside the earth might shake.

This writing is adapted from Dalit literature—“Well Water” from Sharankumar Limbale’s writing and “Chaanya” (fig. 2) from Daya Pawar’s. Whenever I read a Dalit autobiography, I mark where the writer mentions food or water. Then I switch it from the first person to the second to make it read like a recipe—but often one that’s impossible to actually follow. I started this exercise for a number of reasons, including the fact that I couldn’t find any Dalit cookbooks—other than Shahu Patole’s Anna He Apoorna Brahme, which had just come out in Marathi.¹ And there haven’t been any other Dalit cookbooks since people from the community haven’t been allowed to read and write. So how does one write a cookbook in the first place? A cookbook assumes many things, including access to a functioning kitchen, utensils, and ingredients, all of which is related to socioeconomic status. But there’s also an assumption of pride in one’s food, which with Dalit people is difficult because many of our food practices stem from being forced to eat leftovers, to beg, to make do with nothing—but not as a form of resistance. It’s not something that parents want to pass on to their kids. So how does one remember and gather these recipes, and should one even bother? That’s when I realized that it’s not necessary to have a Dalit cookbook in a conventional sense. But Dalit literature, a massive genre given it’s only 50–60 years old, is filled with writing about food and water. Dalit oppression is deeply connected to the stomach, so this exercise has allowed me to understand the similarities in Dalit food across India, but also the differences—and how time works in strange ways. For example, I’d be reading something written 40 years ago and something else written five years ago, and it could be the exact same story. This continues, and I’ve made 23 cookbooks so far. 

These recipes allowed me to build on other works, such as those shown in the exhibition Eat with Great Delight (2018) at the Clark House Initiative (fig. 3).² This series came from my family photos, specifically from examining them as records of where traces of food existed. My family has had access to a camera since the late 1980s, when my mother married my father, a white man who came to India to do social work, and he had a camera. Not only did he take photographs, but also other family members began to use the camera. It was interesting to see the differences between the photos that he took for work and our own family photographs of celebrations. I showed 18 family photos as they were, alongside eight recipe books. Photography, just like writing, is a tool for access. What do you do with a camera? What do you photograph? What do you do with a pen? What do you write about?

I also started working with ceramics in 2017, which came about because I didn’t want to actually cook the food—because it’s not about that. I’m not interested in making a Dalit dish, and people were approaching me and saying, “Can you cook something?” They didn’t get it. But I did want to make something with my hands. Because the reading and writing were getting to be too much, I felt like I needed to process it in a different medium. I started with bhakris (fig. 4a), rotis made out of millet, because some Dalit writers write beautifully about it, comparing it to the sun and moon, to the mother and father, to heaven and hell. I wanted to create the bhakri in a material that would last. Then I went on to make larger installations that reimagine many of the recipes (fig. 4b)—especially if they center foraging or hunting or stealing food—and processed these stories while making the ceramics. Some pieces look like food items, but there are many that don’t. Some look rotten; some look like fungus. Unlike food, or perhaps like Dalit food, they are inedible. 

Then I made Is the water chavdar? between 2020 and 2022. It’s an installation of 10,000 stupas, which look like inverted bowls, about the Chavdar water tank in Mahad, Maharashtra. In 1927, our leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar walked to this tank with 10,000 people to drink water from it. They were in Mahad for a conference on Dalit rights, and even though the government had made it legal for Dalit people to access public water bodies, they were still carrying their own water. So they drank from this tank to make a point. It’s one of the most important Dalit events in history, and yet, it’s forgotten by mainstream upper-caste India. It’s not really mentioned in history textbooks, but Dalit people grow up learning about it and going to Mahad. I wanted to make a memorial or homage to the people who went there. Also, this event was not photographed. Even though cameras were accessible in 1927, it was not considered important enough to record.

I made 10,000 stupas and arranged them to look like a square water tank (fig. 5). I surrounded them with prints of images I sourced from Google Maps. Even though images of the 1927 event don’t exist in any formal archives, Google Maps has thousands of images of Dalit people visiting the location since then. I chose 27 and printed them on transparent sheets and then pressed them into printmaking paper, which gives them a wet-looking quality (figs. 6a–c). This process allowed me to protect the identity of the people in the pictures, but at the same time, they stand in for people from the past or the future. I wanted their faces in the prints because I think people taking photographs of themselves at the water tank is special. It also allowed me to speak about the water without displaying any actual water. These images surround the installation, and then in the middle of it, a beam in the center of the space is covered with paper pulp I made from the Manusmriti, which Ambedkar burned in Mahad about six months after the original event. He burned the book, saying that it must be destroyed, but at the same time, he knew that it was more important for the ghost of Manu, which still lives on in people’s minds, to be burned and defeated.³

In Deeksha (figs. 7a–b), I printed photographs that I had taken of my family celebrating the anniversary of our conversion to Buddhism. In 1956, about six months before Ambedkar died, he converted to Buddhism. He said, “I may have been born a Hindu, but I won’t die one,” and along with him, many Dalit people converted. Our form of Buddhism is quite different as there’s no god, no worshipping of any Hindu deities, no superstition. Gods have controlled Dalit people for thousands of years. It is said that you’re born in this community because you were bad in your past life, so there’s no mobility outside of it unless your god decides differently. With Buddhism, you’re taught to learn to build dignity from within yourself. Now there’s a big resurgence of Buddhism, but if I tell people I’m Buddhist, they’ll know I’m Dalit. I don’t know how much of a difference it makes to others, but at least for us, for our own dignity, it does matter.

For Did you open the door, or did you find it open for you? (2023), I built a stupa with paper pulp from newsprint (figs. 8a–b). Ambedkar started many newspapers in his lifetime, so I was thinking about literacy, access to it, and the possibilities of it. The stupa has become quite an important architectural form. Whereas within Hinduism, we wouldn’t be allowed inside a temple, this conversion has allowed us to access and embrace ancient Buddhist sites that have been in the vicinity for thousands of years as a way of reconnecting—or connecting in the first place—with our new religion. We’re also building new stupas that are hollow inside to serve as meeting places. In Bombay and Pune, you often see white domed structures that are Dalit Buddhists spaces, and they’re occupying more and more parts of India. I built this stupa thinking about the past and the future. 

I started Give up your old habits in 2023 based on the image of Ambedkar (figs. 9a–b), and now I’m building a larger body of work around it. Ambedkar’s image is everywhere, across India—a man in a suit, tie, and glasses, often holding a book—and it’s an interesting relationship that we’ve built with it, because it’s one of pride. Yet it’s also a marker of where Dalit people live, which allows others to make judgments and assessments. In this body of work, I’m printing the same image of Ambedkar on porcelain, but as a silkscreen print, so when it’s on the wet clay, it becomes something else. Each one looks quite different but they all have hints of Ambedkar in them. I’m repeating them in the hundreds and thousands, so let’s see what happens with that.

I’ve also been doing quite a few performances over the past years. Turn Your Bowl into a Stupa (figs. 10a–d) was in Bukhara. Essentially, it was 1,000 bowls that we turned upside down. I feel like this is a strong metaphor for Dalit Buddhism. There is a Tibetan story about when the Buddha was dying . . . His disciples asked him, “What do we do with your body when you die?” And he took his begging bowl and turned it upside down. Though nobody knows if it’s historically true and given Dalit people’s association with begging, with this embrace of a new religion—we’ve also taken the begging bowl and turned it upside down and said no to the past and rejected many things. The performance began with me reading out the recipes followed by turning the bowls upside down with three collaborators. I was very excited to perform this work in Bukhara because the name “Bukhara” stems from the word vihara, which means “Buddhist monastery” or “temple.”

Everything is quiet now was a small performance that I did in Canada (fig. 11). It included four people and four bowls, which we slowly turned upside down. It started with a poem I had written about the Khairlanji massacre, a caste-based atrocity that took place 19 years ago, in which a whole family was brutally killed—and they still haven’t gotten justice. I was using the turning of the bowl as a way to slow down time and to think about this family. I’ve also been working with press photographs that were taken at the sites of this atrocity—at the hut that the Bhotmange family lived in, at the canal where their bodies were dumped. As horrible as it sounds, these photographs and even more violent ones have played a huge role in rallying the Dalit community to push for justice. It was also—as a 16-year-old—my first real encounter with what a Dalit atrocity looks like and with seeing the whole community come together in response to these photos. Though this is a strange way of spending time with them—they’re ink-jet prints, so I use a paintbrush and water to erase them, but they’re still there though certain bits are washed out. 

AS: As a way of beginning our conversation within the context of this group, which is focused on the city and the theme of infrastructures, I was thinking about Pune and Maharashtra as larger infrastructures in your practice—from the neighborhoods where you’ve fabricated different elements of your practice to your involvement with the secular art movement started by Prabhakar Kamble, Clark House, histories of Dalit activism in the region, etc. Could you speak about this? 

RG: It’s all connected. Because my parents are involved in social work, it’s not really been a choice to involve myself in these things. I think even if I wasn’t making art, they would still be an important part of my life. It has been quite special to be involved with the secular art movement, which is the art wing of a political movement in Maharashtra. And it was in spaces like Clark House, the Ajanta caves, and The Middle Way Retreat Centre in Kondanpur where these conversations were had and still continue. The last time we did a secular art movement workshop, we just wanted to get together and see each other’s practices—because we don’t often have opportunities or time or spaces for that—and to look at each other’s work, to listen to each other. Though there’s room for so much more. For example, it’s still very difficult to critique each other because if we’re seen critiquing each other even slightly publicly, then upper-caste artists or people in the art world will use that against us. They try to involve themselves in it and pit us one against the other. It’s quite exhausting. Unfortunately, we’re still seen as just Dalit artists by savarna people. I don’t think I’ll ever make work that’s not about caste, but there has to be space beyond that category. Also, if somebody doesn’t want to recognize the persistence of caste, they simply won’t. Labeling us this way makes it convenient for them to stereotype our practices, tick a box, and look away as fast as possible. 

Lucy Gallun: Thinking about this idea of space-making and how it has come through in your practice across different approaches, media, techniques, etc. . . . You talked about writing being a place, and of literacy and disseminating writing being a history that you’re taking up in your work, but also, about the building of a stupa—of creating something that’s visible in communities—especially in Maharashtra. Could you speak about this idea of a practice of space-making and what it means to you?

RG: Many upper-caste dialogues center on the fact that there’s not enough information, or that people don’t see caste, or that they didn’t grow up practicing caste, etc. Even when I was looking for Dalit cookbooks, I couldn’t find them. But then I realized that it’s just a matter of shifting my perspective; perhaps they don’t exist in a conventional form, but they do exist nonetheless, and then I discovered there’s so much in Dalit literature. I think this is the case with space-making as well, and that my large-scale installations are a way for me to spend time in the spaces themselves, but also, to really think about the significance of these spaces. Whether it’s an ancient site or the Chavdar water tank, which in photographs looks like any other water tank, is important to me. They are both big and small omnipresent sites, and Dalit people recognize and remember them. Even though the white stupas are everywhere, it’s easy for upper-caste people not to pay attention to them in their day-to-day landscapes. For instance, I’m in Goa now, and while Goa is the neighboring state to Maharashtra, and Maharashtra has always had a visible Dalit presence—there are blue Buddhist flags and white stupas everywhere—Goa has considerably less of one. But I tell myself that I have to find out what and how this looks in Goa. I’m trying to train myself to look differently. 

Ksenia Nouril: I’m struck by the materiality of your work—the breaking down, disintegrating, and bringing back together of paper pulp, your painting of photographs to dissolve them, etc. Could you talk about materiality in your practice?

RG: The materiality of my work is very important, if not the most important. Materiality, such as the texture of the paper, for example, allows me to move away from words, from writing, from that sort of language, and allows for a certain kind of infrastructure of invisible presence. The paper disintegrates, and while you can no longer read what is on it, it’s still there. I’m trying to figure out what that means and what to do with it. There’s a lot of hope with Dalit narratives, but there’s also one step forward, three steps back. A lot of the work that people are doing gets invisibilized. With materiality, it allows for that hesitation. While I can be more hopeful when I’m speaking, the materiality of the work allows for a sadness, a haziness, a blankness that paper or ceramic or the blurred photograph can communicate to the viewer better than I can.

Lanka Tattersall: Since Ananya mentioned you’re exhibiting in Venice, could you speak about what you’ll be up to there?

RG: Essentially, it was a grant to produce work that could be shared digitally and that would involve what my community means to me. There’s a Dalit girls’ hostel in Pune—close to where I live—and my parents have been involved with it for decades. I’ve also been visiting it since I was little. Most of the girls there come from villages around Maharashtra, and they’re there because their schools are extremely far from their homes—sometimes 20 kilometers away. Having to walk these distances to get to school would be incredibly difficult. I held workshops—on writing about food, about school, and on drawing their journeys to school, drawing what their schools looks like—and produced a booklet of 15 recipes and stories about finding food, stealing food, etc. The girls who participated were 13–14-year-olds, so their stories are more joyful than the ones I typically read, and I merged them with recipes that I created from female Dalit Maharashtrian writing—so they read as narratives from young girls, and time is again warped. Alongside it, the stories are also presented on video, where the girls read them out in Marathi and English.

LG: I was thinking about how you read us some of your recipes in English, and about the girls reading in Marathi and English, and to a previous session on the little magazine movement in Maharashtra that thought through the different ways that information is shared and what communities share through language, and I’m curious about how that has come up in your practice. 

RG: Until last year I was quite adamant that everything I write had to be in English, even though I can read Marathi and Hindi and I’ve accessed many autobiographies via English translations from Tamil and Telugu. I don’t see English as a non-Indian language, and historically, we weren’t allowed to study pure Marathi or Sanskrit, so an English-language education was the way out and necessary for upward social mobility. English has been an important language of access. There’s no real nostalgia for Marathi, but at the same time, there is something to be said about things that are untranslatable. When I’m reading a Dalit autobiography in Marathi, it’s different from what it is in English. I don’t want to romanticize it, so I keep it in English, because if my audience can read English, then I don’t want to create a barrier to the work. But what I realized from the girls reading in Marathi and English is that even if the audience can’t understand Marathi, there is a generative pause in listening to another language. Again, the girls are studying English; they’re not fluent, but they wanted to read in English as much as they wanted to read in Marathi. If I had robbed them of reading in English, I would have made them feel like they weren’t good enough or that they shouldn’t have been studying English in the first place, so to have their voices in both languages was important.

AS: I have a question about reading as a practice in your looking at memoirs, autobiographies, and memory texts. These writers would have been among the first generation in their families to be educated. Could you speak about these primary sources and about the format of the recipe—what drew you to it, how you adapted some of the larger concerns of the texts into recipes, etc. 

RG: I started with Maharashtrian Dalit writers because they were in my house. The Maharashtrian Dalit community also has an advantage, because Ambedkar was from this community, and it has been the force of his direct influence that has and continues to encourage the community to leave behind caste-based manual work, move to cities, and send their kids to school. A lot of the writers in this genre are male—though there are many female writers as well. But, if one was going to send their children to school for the very first time, it was often the sons who were sent. The realization that one could also send their daughters came later. 

But with the recipes . . . they’re a ploy to get the audience to read the original book. I keep things simple and, in each booklet, I’ll only include six recipes—some short, some slightly longer—and then at the back of the booklet, it says that this has been adapted from “x” autobiography to invite the audience to read this literature. I wish it was not about that, but coming from this space of people not knowing where to start, I provide them with options. Also, as much as my family is involved in this work, it’s still difficult to have one-on-one conversations because there is a lot of shame involved. There are things that people just don’t want to talk about, and I respect that. Dalit writers have written down everything that they needed to, so I decided to see what they’ve written about and to bring it out in whatever way I can. It’s almost like preliminary research for having actual conversations with my own family and others in the future.

AS: It’s also a ploy for people who claim caste doesn’t exist . . .

RG: Yes. The act of opening a book and reading for oneself has allowed me to have more interesting conversations around caste, especially compared to my earlier works which were a little more on the nose, and elicited anger and questions such as why I’m showing work on caste if caste doesn’t exist. So sometimes opening a book, reading it, and trying to figure it out for oneself allows the audience to take it in differently.

This essay stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024–2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here.

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Ananya Sikand: Vrishchik, which means “scorpion,” was a little magazine that you founded and edited with Bhupen Khakhar in Baroda. Published monthly or bimonthly from 1969 to 1973, it featured an array of content including poems, stories, critical essays, and folios of printed artworks.

In her 2001 article “Signatures of Dissent,” Geeta Kapur notes that Vrishchik “spoke in the many voices of those artists, critics, [and] poets” that it spotlighted, serving as an active forum for contemporary artistic and literary expressions as well as a catalyst for artists’ views on their field, on art institutions, and on social concerns.¹ Sheikh Sir, as you’ve noted in the past, Vrishchik was the need of the day, as there were hardly any communication channels through which artists could speak and raise issues at the time. To get started, could you speak about the story behind the name of the publication and about its form and materiality.

Gulammohammed Sheikh: You have rightly noted that there was a dire need for a communication channel among the artists of India, since there was only one journal—Lalit Kala Contemporary—which was very irregular. There was no other channel through which we could communicate with one another. This was an issue that bothered many of us.

I was with friends at our home in the Residency Bungalow in Baroda. About six or seven people had come for a party, and we were discussing this, and we all agreed we should do something about it. One thought was to bring out a journal, and everybody agreed wholeheartedly—but then asked, “How do we do it?”

Let me give you some background. When I was in England, I had become aware of small magazines published across the world. I used to go to bookshops and find publications by small presses, including collections of poems—such as Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. These were not well-known publishers; sometimes they were just individuals publishing their own work.

In India, the poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, who lived in Bombay in those days, had started a small journal called Damn You—a radical literary journal with a critical take on what was going on. Then J. Swaminathan, another artist and friend, brought out a journal called Contra from Delhi. He raised a number of concerns in Contra—mainly about the National Art Academy, the Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA), and its functioning. The LKA was a government-sponsored organization whose members were nominated by the government, and we all felt there was insufficient representation of artists from across India. Vrishchik took up this subject at a later stage.

But let me start with how we began. The first issue was printed at a press in Baroda called Miraj Printery, where I once had a catalogue printed. We asked them if they could print directly from a linoleum block, which they were unfamiliar with but agreed to do. In those days, printing blocks were made of zinc, fixed on a wooden block, and then printed on a letterpress with movable type. Each letter of every word had to be set by hand before the page could be run through the press with a roller. 

We chose brown packing paper because it was cheap and because we loved the color. Printing on tinted paper was far more interesting than printing on white. I had previous experience using lino blocks while working on a Gujarati literary journal called Kshitij (1959–67), which was edited by my literary mentor Suresh Joshi. For a journal of limited resources, I devised a method of producing original prints by taking linoleum to Baroda-based artists—K. G. Subramanyan, my teacher, and Jyoti Bhatt, my senior—and having them hand-cut the block. I would then mount it on a wooden block of the same gauge as a letterpress block so that the hand-cut lino could be printed on the letterpress. This meant that 500 copies could be printed at once, and the lino block remained undamaged. The advantage was that it was an original linocut print that could be made available to 500 people simultaneously. I used to go to the press and sit there while each issue was being printed, checking every copy to see whether the print came out well, whether the ink showed through on the back of the page—which sometimes happened with poor printing in those days. You had to learn to work with the printers to bring out the best result. This is the approach we brought to Vrishchik. 

As we were discussing possible names for the journal, somebody asked, “What is your rashi—your zodiac sign?” It turned out that four people in our larger group were Scorpios, including my wife, Nilima. We thought it was a good idea to call it “Scorpion” because it could have its own life—and a little sting. So Vrishchik emerged, and we put a linocut of a scorpion designed by my friend Vinod Ray Patel on the cover (fig. 1).

The purpose of Vrishchik was to reach out not only to visual artists but also to artists of all denominations. We made a list of filmmakers, writers, painters, etc., of about 250 people, and thought we’d just send it out.

The first issue had six pages. Bhupen [Khakhar], my coeditor, produced a little gem of notes on the visual scene, mocking and relishing popular taste—he called them “visual notes.” Geeta Kapur contributed a poem. Would you believe it? Arvind [Krishna Mehrotra] shared a poem from a series about his wife called “Bacchi Chakra.” After that, poems appeared in several issues. On the last page, I wrote a short editorial about current events. As you know, 1969 was a period of great upheaval because of the communal riots that were raging in Ahmedabad and Baroda and causing great turbulence across Gujarat. I began my first write-up by reflecting on the situation that prevailed at that time—a rumination called “Afternoon.”

Suresh Joshi had written [an essay] on the poet Rajvi Patel—one of the finest Gujarati poets of my generation—which had originally been commissioned by the journal Books Abroad. We reprinted it in the second issue. For the third issue, Vinod Ray designed another cover—this one featuring a hippie-like man and woman with their hair down; both had bodies of scorpions (fig. 2). That issue included writings on cinema, including a delightful riposte by Bhupen in Gujarati on Bollywood films (this was the only non-English write-up in Vrishchik) as well as drawings by an artist friend of my generation, Nagji Patel.

Lucy Gallun: Could you point out some of the contributors to the early issues of the magazine—the types of things they were wanting to circulate among the community and what you chose to include, as you have already started to do. 

GMS: I ran a little office from my home, writing letters to poet friends, writer friends, painter friends, telling them about Vrishchik. Those who received my letters became interested in contributing. Initially, only artists and writers based in Baroda contributed. But later on, I met, for example, a visiting Greek writer who had written about the coup in Athens. I asked to read her piece and found it worthy of publication. She agreed but wanted her identity concealed and chose the pseudonym Erato—the piece was called “A Greek Story.” Vinod Ray made an illustration to accompany it.

Then Bhupen and I were up to some mischief. We decided to buy a popular landscape poster—the kind sold on footpaths—roughly double the size of Vrishchik. We bought 200 or 300 copies and, on the blank reverse side, concocted a dialogue between an artist and an art critic. We came down rather heavily on absurd stories circulating among artists about their role and that of art critics and criticism. It was part gossip, part serious critique, and as expected, it angered many people. We thought it was a way of communicating with our community with no holds barred. We received a number of letters in response; some enjoyed the tongue in cheek humor, but others found it hard to stomach.

The subsequent issue reproduced letters from GIs in Vietnam. It was followed by an issue featuring a dialogue on the state of contemporary printmaking between Jagmohan Chopra, who started Group 8 in Delhi, Bishamber Khanna, Zarina, Jyoti Bhatt, and me. This issue carried ten prints by the aforementioned artists and by K. G. Subramanyan, Jeram Patel, Bhupen, and Anupam Sud—all well-known artists of the day. 

After that, Arvind sent a long poem “Song of the Rolling Earth,” which we published. Adil Jussawalla, another well-known poet, submitted a poem called “Dog.” I wrote “Miniature Purana”—a critical view of how art history in India was being written at the time. 

In issues that followed, we focused on saint poetry. I came across translations by Arun Kolatkar—a bilingual poet who translated Muktabai, Janabai, and Namdev—and was deeply moved by them. My favorite poem, by Janabai, goes:

I eat God 
I drink God 
I sleep on God 
I buy God 
I count God 
I deal with God 
God is here
God is there
Void is not devoid of God 
God is within
God is without
And moreover, there is God to spare.

Arvind had also begun translating the great 15th- and 16th-century poet Kabir. One of his best poems, in Arvind’s translation, reads:

The kings shall go, so will their pretty queens
Courtiers and all proud ones shall go
Pandits chanting the Vedas shall go and go with those who listen to them
Masochist yogis and bright intellectuals shall go
Go the moon and the sun and the water and wind
Thus, only those can remain whose minds are tied to the rocks.

My friend Gieve Patel—the painter, poet, and playwright—had visited Baroda in the early 1960s and met Suresh Joshi, who had written on the Gujarati medieval poet called Vasto. Gieve sat with Joshi, took extensive notes about translating Vasto, and from these notes, produced three poems, which we also published.

The next issues raised the question of the impending Triennale—the international exhibition planned by the LKA (fig. 3). Many issues were devoted to artists’ letters questioning the relevance of the Triennale. Artists from all over the country wrote in with their views on the impending event—K. G. Subramanyan from Baroda; Pranab Ranjan Ray from Calcutta; Krishen Khanna, Swaminathan, and Roshan Alkazi from Delhi; K. K. Hebbar from Karnataka; and Akbar Padamsee from Bombay. Eventually the Triennale did take place—along with protests and controversy. Vrishchik became a forum for protests against the LKA and its reform. Most of us boycotted the Triennale and the LKA, and so the government was obliged to appoint a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Khosla. After traveling around the country to consult artists, [Khosla’s] suggestion was that the LKA implement a process by which artists themselves elect representatives to serve on its general council.

These issues also raised other questions—such as the implications of internationalism. Geeta wrote on this subject, and Vivan Sundaram, her partner at a later stage, wrote a rejoinder. We published both. So, these conversations on the Triennale and on what kind of internationalism India should have eventually led to the reformation of the LKA.

Our main interest was to arouse awareness of issues within the artist community. We were dealing with multiple generations of artists who were active in those days—K. K. Hebbar and Krishen Khanna belonged to the first generation, Swaminathan and I to the next, and then there were younger artists. The basic purpose of Vrishchik was to create that kind of awareness across generations. 

Lanka Tattersall: Could you tell us a little more about the state of printmaking in Baroda, which you mentioned was the focus of one of the issues?

GMS: In Baroda, printmaking was an important part of the syllabus right from the beginning—from the 1950s onward. Students of painting took printmaking as a subsidiary subject. I learned printmaking in the graphic arts department of the Faculty [of Fine Arts]. The Smithsonian Institution hosted a printmaking workshop in Delhi in 1970, inviting 100 artists from across India and providing facilities to work on the best papers and zinc plates. Over a month, we learned etching and aquatint under Paul Lingren. On returning to Baroda, I bought an etching press, set it up in my home, and worked on a series. Jyoti Bhatt took to printmaking intensively, and it eventually turned out to be his principal métier. Others who took to printmaking and produced exceptional works were Laxma Goud, Devraj Dakoji, D. L. N. Reddy, and Purushottam and Rini Dhumal—all of whom worked at the Faculty under the guidance of N. B. Joglekar, who headed the graphic arts department.

AS: As additional context, each handcrafted issue of Vrishchik was supplemented by a free original artwork—modest in scale—whether a linocut, woodcut, or lithograph. Sheikh Sir, could you speak further on the artworks that accompanied each issue?

GMS: I had seen four issues of Contra that printed artworks using machine-made blocks. This made me think that Vrishchik could introduce linocuts, woodcuts, and other printmaking mediums. So, while we printed an artwork on the cover, we also included a loose copy of it inside Vrishchik—so that those who wanted could mount and preserve it or put it on display.

As for how Vrishchik was produced: as I said earlier, I was running a little office from my own home, writing letters, keeping correspondence in big files, and sometimes getting my students to help. We had 500 copies per issue, and 250 to 300 had to be sent out, which meant writing addresses, stuffing printed copies in envelopes, and posting them all—which was conducted entirely from the Residency Bungalow. I enjoyed it. I asked Bhupen to handle the accounts, which he did—he was a chartered accountant.

The press we used from the third issue onward, 3-A Associates, was run by N. B. Joglekar and he was amenable to any kind of experiment we wanted to try. First, we gave him linocuts to print. Then I said, “Mr. Joglekar, you also have an offset press.” Offset is like lithography but on a plate—you draw directly on the plate. So, Bhupen and I and others made drawings right there, which were then transferred and printed. Bhupen made a drawing of a tailor, among others (fig. 4).

LG: You’ve discussed your office at the bungalow, working with Bhupen Khakhar, the head of the graphics department, who served as printer, and your students helping with the mailing. Could you say more about the setting at MSU Baroda—and at the same time, your relationship to other artists in other cities, particularly Bombay, given our group has been discussing the art scene there at length?

GMS: As you know, the artist community in India is like an extended family—we all knew each other. I used to travel to Bombay, meet friends there, see their exhibitions, and the same applied to Delhi. I had also been to Santiniketan, to Calcutta, and to several other places. I had personal friendships with many artists, so I asked them for contributions for Vrishchik, and they offered willingly.

LG: Was there something specific about Baroda that enabled this kind of journal to happen in a particular way?

GMS: Baroda was very special among art schools in India at that time. It was one of the most liberal institutions, which allowed all kinds of activities, and we had students from all walks of life and sections of society.

The pioneers of the Faculty had Gandhian ideals—of building something they could handle without hankering after what was beyond their means. The institution was built on basics: painting, which needed a good studio; sculpture, which needed casting facilities; printmaking, which needed an etching press, a litho press etc.; and art history, [which was] taught to every student regardless of department. The Story of Art—a history of world art—which I taught for almost eighteen years was key to every student’s education. I had very young and bright students; they included Vivan, who came from the elite Doon School, while others came from small towns and tribal hinterlands. I taught the Story of Art in English for degree students and in Hindi for diploma students. At some stage, students who knew I was Gujarati asked why I didn’t teach it in Gujarati, so then I taught three classes on the same subject. In the first, Vivan would bring up Jackson Pollock; in the second, students only knew what was happening in their part of India; and in the third, some had not even heard of the Mona Lisa. That was the big challenge—how to teach all of them. It opened my eyes to the diversity of the world of artists coming to the Faculty.

But I will also go back to my background. I grew up in a small town called Surendranagar in Gujarat, where I started writing poetry, drawing, and painting. In those days it was customary for good schools to have a hand-painted, handwritten annual journal. One of my teachers—a poet who led me to write in Gujarati—decided to make such a journal to be placed in the public library every week. He decided that we would produce it together. We went to the Khadi Bhandar—khadi is the hand-spun cloth associated with Gandhi—which produced a very rough handmade paper that I enjoyed working on. Today, all artists love such papers because they are resilient and receptive to paint. On them, I would paint the cover, draw the titles of articles, and illustrate a picture story for children, while my teacher wrote short stories, a thought of the day, and poems. This ran for a year when I was about fifteen. I still have some copies—I showed them recently in an exhibition of my printmaking.

Jay Levenson: You mentioned Vrishchik was addressed primarily to artists. Were there also collectors who were involved?

GMS: No. Our list included visual artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers—about 200 people, many of whom we knew personally. I think there were hardly any collectors in those days. Those who may have collected works by [M. F.] Husain or Krishen Khanna were not accessible to us.

In those days, if we wanted to exhibit, we did it ourselves. No gallery would pick up our work. We took our paintings to Bombay or Delhi, mounted the exhibition ourselves, printed our own catalogues, and tried to sell the work by sitting in the gallery. I remember my first exhibition in Bombay: I had learned from my seniors that canvases had to be rolled up, so all our canvases were rolled. We took our stretchers, bound everything up, and booked a first-class train for the occasion. In Bombay, we couldn’t afford taxis, so we used horse carriages to transport everything to Jehangir Art Gallery, a public gallery that only opened around 11 o’clock. We’d arrive at six in the morning, wait for hours, then unpack our things, put the frames back on the canvases, and mount the show. A carpenter helped, if we could afford one; otherwise we did it ourselves.

As for collectors, I remember that Air India was a major buyer in those days. There was a gentleman called Jal Cowasji who made the rounds of galleries—and everybody would trail him, because he was the main person acquiring work for the airline. By 1969, the situation had improved with a few more galleries, but private galleries were still very few.

Rattanamol Singh Johal: Could you reflect on the relationship between Vrishchik during that very productive period from 1969 to 1973 and your painting practice at the same time. Reading the editorial from the first issue— “Afternoon”—I was struck by how much it resonates with paintings like Returning Home After Long Absence (1969–73; fig. 5) and Speechless City (1975; fig. 6). Could you speak to the threads that connect your poetry, your narrative writing, and your painting?

GMS: All of it—my writing on communalism, on silence, on isolation; my painting; my publishing of Vrishchik—were connected. 

When I returned from England in 1966, I took a long, nearly three-month journey, traveling by road from London to Bombay via Europe—buses, trains, walking, everything. That journey allowed me to discover India, and I began to look at everything with fresh eyes. I remember being on a bus near Jhansi, watching the landscape change as the bus moved so fast that distant trees appeared to rush toward me and mountains shrank. Experiences like this were accumulating. It was also when I felt I should write my memoir. I was on a train heading home to Surendranagar, and on whatever scraps of paper I had, I started scribbling notes on returning home. That memoir in Gujarati is now published, and hopefully an English edition will appear soon.

At the same time, I began the painting Returning Home After Long Absence. My memoir and my painting went hand in hand, opening pages of each other. In the painting, I brought in my mother, images of the town I grew up in, an Islamic backdrop with an image of the Prophet, a big wall—I wrote an entire chapter in my memoir on a wall—and trees, particularly the peepal tree, the Ficus religiosa, which was a beautiful tree that I could see from my window at the Faculty. All these things combined during those years.

By 1973, I was painting both from within myself and from what I saw around me—I painted two works called Man I and Man II (figs. 7, 8). Man I is a metaphorical work in which a man is seated, with his head on his lap. In Man II, a man holds another man [who is tied up] as an object of public display. That was when my eyes opened to the politics of India—which eventually led to Speechless City, painted while the Emergency was in effect. The roots of many paintings that came later were sown during that same period, while I was also publishing Vrishchik and writing poetry. 

AS: I’d like to close by asking about your commitment to multilingualism across your writing, poetry, teaching and publishing practices. 

GMS: I do not really know how to explain it—all three languages come to me naturally. I knew Gujarati because it is my mother tongue, and so if I want to write poetry or creative prose, like my memoir, I choose Gujarati. I learned Hindi on my own—and everyone in India knows some Hindi because of Hindi cinema. And English, I learned in school and college.

Vrishchik was, in part, a kind of lesson for me: It allowed me to polish my English. I did not know English very well at the start, but those four years helped me learn it properly. I was communicating with a large number of people, writing and receiving letters, editing contributions, proofreading—and when Adil or Gieve wrote in perfect English, I had to ensure that every word was printed exactly as they had written it.

All of this was part of my life, [as was] living within a family with my children and Nilima. I cannot really describe myself. I can only say that all of this is part of me—not something I took on as a challenge or as a duty, but something that came naturally. It was all part of my makeup.

Every Indian speaks two or three languages: the local language, Hindi, English or another language. We are plural by nature, multilingual. We think in multiple languages simultaneously. That is the makeup of the average mind, and thus, I am not so different. By writing in multiple languages, I have learned that I have to find myself in each of them.

The C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Group would like to express its sincere thanks to Gulammohammed Sheikh and to the team at the Asia Art Archive in India for making Vrishchik available to us. The magazine’s various issues can be accessed via the following link.

This essay stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024-2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here. 

The post On <em>Vrishchik</em>: A Conversation with Gulammohammed Sheikh  appeared first on post.

Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar: I think we need to think a little more carefully about what we call “our inheritance.” What you think is yours may not actually be yours in the way you imagine. I am not saying you do not have a right to access it, but you have to think about how and why and where you are using it. The culture I want to be part of, the culture I want to help create, is shaped by artists from oppressed castes, from Adivasi and Indigenous lineages.¹ But being an artist from an oppressed caste in South Asia is not new. These are communities that have produced culture and developed visual traditions for centuries. Traditionally, we were the artists. We were the ones creating looms and weaves and pottery.

What the Western world now calls “craft” and what it sometimes demeans as “craft”—all of it was developed by those who belonged to oppressed castes, not by those from oppressor castes. So when I see people casually referencing certain patterns or weaves—as if it is simply, “I’m South Asian, I’m Indian, this exists in my work”—that is not how that works. That is not how those loom and weaving codes came to be. Those codes were developed in very specific political, social, and historical contexts.

So we have to think about what that canon really is. And we have to think about it very intentionally. I am not the first person saying this. Many artists, like me, talk about how the entire cultural, political, and visual culture of South Asia comes from communities that belong to oppressed castes. Yet in the larger art world, South Asian art is often represented only by those from oppressor castes. And that is deeply warped. It smells a bit of appropriation to be honest.

MV: This way of very intentionally thinking about inheritance has shaped how you work with material history, especially your Dalit Panthers Archive. You’ve often described yourself as an “accidental archivist.” Can you explain what the Dalit Panthers Archive is and what it meant to take on that work? 

SNS: The Dalit Panthers Archive grew out of very practical circumstances. A few friends and I were researching a documentary on the Dalit Panthers, and we kept running into the same problem: There simply wasn’t enough accessible material.² There were very few photographs, very little visual documentation, and that made it difficult to work on the project as nonfiction. As we continued researching, we realized that much of the Panthers’ history was being held privately. People had posters, pamphlets, and publications in their homes, but they were often in very fragile condition. We began scanning and recording these materials initially as part of the research process, but it quickly became clear that this work needed to be done more deliberately.

One thing that’s important to understand about the Dalit Panthers is that they were not visual artists or performers. They were writers and poets deeply involved in radical literary movements in Maharashtra at the time. The movement existed largely through poetry, writing, and publication. So we focused very specifically on that print culture: manifestos (fig. 1), book covers, little magazine publications, and writing by or featuring Panther poets and writers.³

After that, I spent months editing hundreds of images one by one, cleaning them up, and assembling them into readable PDFs. But almost all of this material was in Marathi, and I was extremely dissatisfied with displaying or circulating it without translation—especially outside of Maharashtra. When people can’t read the text, engagement stops. It becomes a visual reference rather than an encounter with the writing itself or the image and text in tandem.

That’s when translation became central to the archive. I applied for funding through the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation so that the work could be translated, edited, and interpreted. Because this writing is rooted in a very specific time and place, translation required more than just linguistic accuracy. It meant understanding slang, cultural references, and historical context that doesn’t immediately carry across generations. In that sense, translation became part of the archival labor itself.

MV: As you were working through this material, was there a particular publication or person that you found yourself returning to?

SNS: Through this process, I ended up getting extremely close to Raja Dhale’s work.⁴ Not in the sense of speaking to him, unfortunately, because he passed away around the same time I was working on the translations. We had spoken earlier, during the documentary interviews, but not during the translation phase of the research—as I really wish we had.

Because once I started reading everything he had written—slowly, carefully—I understood him very differently. What became clear to me was how urgent his relationship to language was. He was thinking constantly about how we speak, how we write, how we publish, because he was deeply concerned with being misunderstood. He wanted language to be sharp, so that what was being said could not be easily distorted. I relate to that very strongly.

One publication that stayed with me was Chakravarty, a literary daily he published for fourteen days straight (fig. 2). That in itself is kind of insane! It was not about current affairs; it was only literature, only radical writing. And he did everything himself. What struck me about the text was that it was not dry or heavy. It was funny. It had a real sense of humor. There were fake obituaries, satire, moments of play. That combination of rigor and humor felt very important.

Working with Chakravarty also raised questions for me about form. I spoke to one of the artists whose work appeared in the publication, and he told me that the images often had nothing to do with the text. Dhale would simply say he liked the work and include it. The image did not illustrate the writing, and that separation was interesting to me. The publication itself became the work. And spending time with that material made me think much more seriously about skill, rigor, and intention in political practice. It challenged the idea that it is enough to just have something to say. The Panthers, and Dhale especially, were extremely precise about how they said it.

MV: What I find especially compelling in your work is how you move between very specific materials, like Dhale’s Chakravarty, and much wider cultural inheritances in India. How do you understand the Panthers’ place within older lineages, particularly Buddhist histories in Maharashtra?

SNS: When I think about my own lineages, the Panthers are a very direct influence, but they are only one part of a much larger anti-caste movement. And that movement comes from Buddhist cultures as well. Growing up in Bombay, a huge part of my childhood was having access to the Kanheri Caves (fig. 4). My mother used to take us every year during the monsoon. We would trek up and spend time in these over-2,000-year-old caves with extraordinary carvings and sculptures. These were not just monuments, but also Buddhist learning centers, places where people lived, studied, and created. Being in those spaces makes you think about what Mumbai once was—green, swampy islands where philosophers, artists, and writers lived. That is a very real cultural lineage for me.

At the same time, you become very aware of how quickly these histories get absorbed into Brahminical narratives. These sites are constantly being reinterpreted as something else, often as places where the Pandavas rested, when they were clearly Buddhist spaces of learning.⁵

More recently, I was at the Elephanta Caves, and I was struck by how aggressively Buddhist history is being suppressed.⁶ The site has a layered history, but what is happening now is not about complexity. On the plaques, they avoid even using the word Buddhist. Things are described as stylistically Buddhist, not as what they actually are. There is a very clear erasure of Buddhist and Jain traditions happening. Parts of the caves that are visibly Buddhist are left to crumble and remain closed, while other narratives are foregrounded. 

MV: What does witnessing that erasure demand of you as an artist working with history?

SNS: I think about this a lot in relation to my position as an “accidental archivist.” I am not a historian or an archaeologist, but rather an artist working with history, I know that symbols matter. It becomes important to use them deliberately and clearly. This is not only about Buddhism as a religion of liberation for my community. It is also about recognizing traditions in South Asia that existed in opposition to Vedic culture. For me, engaging these older inheritances is part of the same work as engaging the Panthers. It is about insisting on histories that are foundational but repeatedly pushed aside.

MV: When you work within these older inheritances and the Panthers’ print culture, you are encountering symbols that already carry enormous political weight. I’m thinking of the panther in particular, a symbol shaped by a long history of Black civil rights struggles in the United States. How does this image surface in your work?

Being a Panther was something that people took on very passionately and very immediately. We adopted it because the panther is such a powerful-looking animal. It’s strong; it’s striking. Even now, I have a panther tattoo. That image resonated very deeply with people. I think it also stood in opposition to other symbols at the time, like the Shiv Sena tiger.⁷

I was thinking through this symbol while working on an illustration based on the 2022 film Jhund (fig. 5).⁸ I represented one of the characters with a whole world operating around her, and from those details you can tell so much about her life. At the same time, she’s still the focus: She carries a sense of ambition and aspiration, and she’s also holding something of the “learned culture” that comes from expressing yourself through fashion or hair. We never see her like this in the film, but this is the version of her that has existed in my mind.

She is wearing a leopard print in the illustration, which is very intentional. It could easily look like a Western fashion reference, but for me it comes from somewhere very local. It’s inspired by Namdeo Dhasal, a leader and poet in the Dalit Panthers. He was known for his flamboyance, for wearing wild, printed kurtas. I’m not saying the girl is a “panther” or that the Panthers are the main point of the image. It’s more that their presence exists as a backdrop that she can stand confidently against. So even when a pattern or an emblem looks global, the reference is very local, very specific. It’s Dhasal. It’s the Panthers. And this is true across my portraits right now.

In one of my portraits in [the series] Educate, for example, I made a self-portrait about my early education at home (fig. 6). In almost every childhood photo of me, there’s a book—or I’m scribbling on the wall. Those scribbles aren’t imagined. My parents let me practice writing the alphabet directly on the walls. They encouraged that kind of learning. That portrait is about education in the home and how formative it was. From it, I made a ceramic chalk box with a panther on top as a companion object (fig. 7). When I started looking up references, I realized there’s a very popular Indian brand called Panther Chalks. It’s completely ordinary, mass-produced. So, I thought, I’m going to use it. I’m going to take this panther and make it mine.

MV: In works like Panther Chalks, you’re clearly engaging the panther as a symbol, but not by reproducing the Black Panther image directly. Instead, you draw from the Indian leopard. Where does that image enter your thinking?

SNS: Yes. The specific panther I’m referencing was made by Subash Awachat, for a cover of Manohar Magazine (fig. 8). It wasn’t published by the Panthers themselves. It comes from a lineage of progressive print culture in Pune. The artist was representing the Indian panther, the leopard. I really loved that, because that’s also how I like to approach the Panthers. I don’t use the Black Panther panther in my work. I don’t think I ever have. That is not the panther I’m speaking through. It has its own legacy and its own history, and there was a reason the Dalit Panthers used that symbol in the 1970s. But now, from this moment and place, I use the Indian leopard. And even within the movement at the time, people were trying to visualize an Indian connection.

MV: It’s interesting because you’re creating new connections and lineages for this symbol. Now that you’re also working in the United States around the other lineage of the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, has the panther taken on new meaning for you?

SNS: I’ll be honest: I don’t force myself to go looking for it. If something comes up naturally, I follow it. I had an opportunity in Chicago—a print workshop paired with a talk on the Dalit Panther Archive—at an event called “From Panther to Panther.”⁹ People who had engaged with both movements were there, and I met some former Black Panthers. That experience felt like being at home. But I don’t want to seek things out in a way that feels imposed on me. I also don’t want to exoticize Black history or Black political struggle by chasing after parallels. I do seek connections, but only when they’re organic. And there hasn’t been enough time for me here to explore that [connection] deeply. I also don’t want to replicate the dynamic of some white visitors in India who arrive and say, “Tell us everything.” I don’t want to replicate that here by demanding access to Black histories. If I was a tourist, I might spend all day in museums and archives. But when you live somewhere, you need to find your place in the culture instead of declaring, “I’m here now; love me.”

It would be a disservice to both communities and both political movements to place them side by side as if they’re the same. The contexts are entirely different, including [with regard to] the role of women in each movement. And while I feel deep solidarity with African American, Caribbean, and Indigenous communities here, I don’t want to impose that solidarity. It’s like any relationship: It has to be reciprocal. You can’t force it. It has to have time and space to emerge. That’s why I haven’t rushed to draw strict parallels. But when genuine connection happens—when I tell someone here about the Dalit Panthers, and they feel an immediate kinship—it’s beautiful. It feels like meeting someone from home, even though they belong to a different history.

MV: That’s why I find the leopard illustration so compelling. It’s not about superimposing one history onto another; it’s about finding forms of solidarity that grow from where you’re rooted.

SNS: The main reason that the leopard resonates so much with me is its relationship to Bombay. Its life inside that city, with its shrinking habitat and environmental pressures—that context matters. When the Black Panthers chose the black panther, there was intention: The animal’s sleekness, its quiet strategy, its defensive intelligence. If you look at the Indian leopard through the lens of Bombay, its survival carries a different meaning: Its connection to the land, to Indigenous communities, to environmental neglect, to the fact that leopards are often sighted near the Kanheri Caves—all of that is present. So when I use the leopard, I’m thinking very specifically about the leopard of Bombay, the context of the Dalit Panthers, and what it means that we come from the same place as this animal. That authenticity, that rootedness, is at the core of how a culture becomes deep enough that it can’t be erased. The Dalit Panthers as an organization didn’t last long, but the culture [that its members] generated runs deep. The same is true of the Black Panthers. The culture they built endures through the imagination of Black women, community programs, healthcare initiatives, the Free Breakfast for Children Program, etc. These are the things that sustain a movement, and they’re also what sustains culture.

It’s the same with art. The same energies that sustain political movements sustain visual culture. So the work has to keep reactivating itself. As an artist, I have to stay tuned to that. I don’t want the work or the culture we’re building together to be something that can easily disappear. There are always people ready to erase it the second they get a chance. I don’t want that chance to exist, and I want my art to offer a mutual sustaining, a feeding of each other.

The post “It’s not about superimposing one history onto another; it’s about finding forms of solidarity that grow from where you’re rooted.”: Maya Varma in Conversation with Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar; Part II appeared first on post.

Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar: For me, Mumbai has always been a working-class city. That’s its defining character. Any city that grows because people come there to work develops certain things: functional public transport, cheap food, spaces you can access without feeling excluded. Rent is expensive, of course, but life around you feels reachable. That accessibility shaped my childhood. I was constantly out—taking buses and trains on my own by age eight or nine. That kind of mobility gives you agency that stays with you, especially for a girl in India (fig. 1).

I also grew up in a very political home. My parents are Ambedkarite, Marxist, anti-caste people who fought hard for their education, and their politics shaped everything in our house. My family has been in Mumbai for a couple of generations, so our relationship to the city is deep. Even with the gentrification happening now, it is still hard for me to be angry at Mumbai. There was a time when the city felt like it was truly ours. We could sit by the sea, go to the aquarium, the museum, the planetarium. My parents took me everywhere, and that exposure shaped me into someone who is always thinking and asking questions.

Mumbai also gave me a visual language. It did not come from galleries, because there were not many accessible ones then. It came from the trains, the sea, the political culture of Maharashtra, the literary tradition of essays, theater, poetry, and also from the vibrance of the music we grew up with. There was a kind of freedom in those moments, even if it was never fully available to Dalit girls in the same way. That tension between what we desire and what we can access has shaped how I look at the world.

MV: You were also growing up during an intense political moment in the city, with violence unfolding around you while the country projected a very different public narrative. As your political commitments deepened, how did this dissonance shape your sense of responsibility as an artist? 

SNS: I was born in 1992, so all the politics of that time were simply the atmosphere of my childhood. Babri happened shortly after I was born, the Bombay riots happened right after, and the 1990s and early 2000s were ripe with bomb blasts and communal tension.¹ It became normal for us. You would be waiting for a train or a bus, hear that a blast happened somewhere else in the city, and then you would just go home. Everyone who grew up in Mumbai in the ’90s lived with that kind of violence.

At the same time, mainstream media kept presenting a very liberal idea of unity and diversity. Those were the images painted everywhere, even though the reality around us was completely different. When I think about it now, it feels absurd that this is what we accepted as normal. But that environment shaped how I thought about culture and what it means to make something that cannot be twisted or misunderstood later. 

As someone from a marginalized community, I’m never only an artist. I’m always thinking about the past that shaped my family, the present I’m trying to make sense of, and the future I want to help build. My work has to hold all of that. That’s why I don’t respond immediately to events around me. My practice needs time to research, to understand what already exists, and to be intentional about how I represent myself and my community.

I also know now that I am someone who needs to be liberated. I’m part of the community I’m speaking from. For me to work honestly, I have to understand what my own body carries: my grandmother’s experiences, my sisters’ experiences, my friends’ experiences. All of that moves through me, and processing it takes time. I’m always thinking about posterity. I don’t want a future where culture looks back at us and gets it wrong. I can’t control how the present sees us, but by making the work I make, I’m putting something into the present that I hope the future will understand clearly. There should be no mistake.

MV: I’d like to turn to the portraits in your new series Educate, which takes these questions around representation into the lives and lineages of Dalit women. How did that project begin, and what does “educate” mean for you in this context?

SNS: Educate is the first part of a three-part series I began about a year and a half ago. The title comes from the first word in [the slogan] Shika, sanghatit vha ani sangharsh kara—which is usually translated as “educate, agitate, organize.”² But shika is often misunderstood, and it actually means “learn.” “Educate” in English can sound like teaching others, but I’m thinking about learning in a much broader sense: the knowledge systems Dalit communities have built, the violence students have endured, and the determination with which they continue to pursue education. I’m not trying to glorify that struggle; I’m trying to understand what this pursuit of knowledge has meant over a very long time.

For us, learning has always been taken seriously as a way out of poverty and caste oppression. Even if literacy rates are lower than the national average, the numbers themselves are remarkable given what people have been put through. Culturally, there is a very specific emphasis on education. At our events, there are always books, pamphlets, translations. At Chaityabhoomi on December 6, people spend their hard-earned money on literature and art.³ These are things supposedly meant for the elite, yet everyone wants to learn something—or at least to hold onto that aspiration.

All of this brought me to Mukta Salve (fig. 3). In 1855, when she was only 14, she wrote “About the Grief of the Mahars and Mangs” in the Marathi journal Dnyanodaya. It’s one of the earliest published anti-caste texts by a Dalit girl. The essay is painful, but it’s also full of a sharp awareness that education is the only way out of enslavement. Ambedkar repeated her points about half a century later. So for me, Educate has to begin with Mukta Salve.

MV: Instead of depicting Salve directly, you’ve chosen to paint her “descendants,” the people in her intellectual and political lineage. How did that idea take shape for you?

SNS: When I looked at the few visuals that exist of Mukta Salve, there’s really just this one image that circulates. And it doesn’t sit right with me. Beautiful as it is, it feels like it’s coming directly from the lineage of Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906)—those soft, “divine” upper-caste aesthetics rooted in colonial art pedagogy. Ravi Varma painted women from oppressor-caste households into these ethereal, gentle embodiments of “sacredness,” and those images went on to define what an “ideal Indian woman” or “goddess” looked like (fig. 4). That visual language wasn’t built from our lives; it was built from theirs.

So when I look at that image of Mukta Salve, it doesn’t feel connected to who she might have been, or what she wrote, or the conditions she was writing from. It’s an aesthetic that isn’t ours. I did think for a moment, “Should I try to paint her?” But what would be the point of that? For me to sit here and imagine her face… I don’t know what that activity does or what it gives to the work, or to us as a culture.

I instead began thinking about Dalit women and girls who are pursuing education now—the people who are carrying her legacy forward. And I wanted the portraits to be a space of release for them, not a re-creation of a historical figure we can’t accurately imagine. That’s how I started painting my friend Divya, who is doing her PhD in New York (fig. 5). The titles themselves will hold that connection between her and Salve, something like Divya in lieu of Mukta Salve, or Mukta Salve’s Divya. The two women are tied together in the work—not visually but conceptually. Divya becomes a way of thinking about what Mukta Salve made possible and what it means for Dalit women to pursue knowledge today.

MV: In the portrait of Divya, the pose of rest feels central. Rest has a very specific lineage in Western portraiture, often idealized through the bourgeoisie. How were you thinking about rest in this context?

SNS: Divya wasn’t posing at all. I spent the day with her, waiting to see when she would finally stop moving. And, at one point, she just sat down. If you look closely, there’s a scowl on her face. It’s not rest. It’s a five-minute break in a full day of labor. That moment is important because portraiture usually puts something on a pedestal: dignity, beauty, power. Here, I wanted to put that tiny, vulnerable pause on a pedestal. That’s the release I’m talking about.

The patterns in the painting do specific work too. The couch pattern comes from the crops grown on Divya’s family’s land. They are literally what she rests on, generationally and materially. The blanket is the exact sari her mother wears in a photo Divya showed me. Divya doesn’t like keeping direct references to her home because the distance becomes too painful, so I brought her mother in indirectly, through pattern. Because her mother is central to Divya’s rest.

And the vulnerability of her pose exists only because of my relationship with her. This is based on a photograph, not a sitting. If she were sitting for me, the softness would disappear, and it would become labor again. That’s why it matters that she wasn’t performing. She was simply tired. And my work is to take that moment and magnify it.

MV: When I visited your studio, you were also working on a portrait of a woman in a bathtub. It felt like a very different kind of scene—still intimate, but coming from another set of questions. Could you talk about what you’re exploring there?

SNS: Yes. That portrait is still very unresolved. It’s of my friend Hrithik, who’s doing her PhD in Minneapolis (fig. 6). She had just moved to the US, and we were talking about how suddenly you have bathtubs everywhere. In India, you don’t. A bathtub is such an aspiration— a marker of “you’ve made it.” And then we started talking about bubble baths—how much guilt there is because of the water, and how strange it feels to allow yourself that kind of pleasure. And from there, we were talking about what we allow ourselves as Dalit women, and what we don’t.

She’s very young. And right now, she’s in this moment of “I’ll do whatever I want. I’m going to have fun. I don’t care what anyone says.” And that takes a long time to arrive at. It might look like normal “young person behavior,” but for her it’s new. She has become young now. That also happened to me—I came into my youth when I was older. When I was younger, I wasn’t young. So for her, this portrait is about exercising agency, claiming the right to live her life as a young person, on her own terms. And for me, it’s also the first time I’m painting someone in this context.

MV: That question of agency feels connected to what you were saying earlier about the series as a whole. Not just rest, but how Dalit women navigate their own representational constraints. How does that come through in this portrait? 

SNS: All of these portraits are not only about repose. They’re also about morality and respectability politics, and how those things get imposed on Dalit women’s bodies. Shailaja Paik writes about this: the way Dalit womanhood, through the anti-caste movement, starts to carry an imposed masculinity.⁴ We become bodies that are supposed to represent endurance, sacrifice, honor. You never want your body to trigger the tabooed memories of the kinds of labor Dalit women were historically forced into. And that’s a huge burden, because that same body also has desires, sexuality, pleasure. But you cannot express that. You cannot be playful. That’s what we mean when we say, “I didn’t get to be young when I was younger.” Within the anti-caste movement, there is so much respectability politics. Someone will always say: “This is not how someone from our community behaves. You represent serious things, so you must always be serious.” There is no space to be fully human.

And you know, it’s uncomfortable for me too. There are moments when I’m painting and I think, “What am I doing?” These women are simply feeling something, and it doesn’t look overtly political. It doesn’t look radical. But there is a radical edge to it. While I paint, my body has to stay aware of that tension—not only the need to challenge Brahminical patriarchy and Brahminical supremacy, but also the need to challenge ourselves. Art cannot just make us feel represented. It can’t only give us images of Dalit women that confirm what we already know. It also has to push us to ask, “What do we allow Dalit women to do?”

As someone shaped by the anti-caste movement, I have to ask whether I am ready to tolerate women from my community enjoying themselves. Because the moment Dalit women experience pleasure or softness, it’s dismissed as frivolous or unserious. And that dismissal sits on top of generations of emotional, physical, and intellectual labor carried disproportionately by Dalit women. They have carried entire communities, yet are not afforded their own humanity. That’s the challenge this series is trying to hold. If you had told me four months ago that I would be painting someone in a bubble bath as part of Educate, I wouldn’t have believed you. It feels wild. Because the histories around education for Dalit communities are full of violence—the use of water against us, the violence in schools and universities, the experiences of Dalit students navigating institutions designed not to include them. Those histories shape what we imagine “education” is supposed to look like, and you wouldn’t expect these portraits from that imagination. 

MV: Especially when you place them in the lineage of Salve’s writing.

SNS: Exactly. To then say Mukta Salve’s Hrithik—that is an immense claim. And yet while the rest of us are tense, she is there, having the bubble bath she deserves. She is in bliss. 

MV: Which was the point of Salve’s writing—to carve out the right to live differently.

SNS: This is what I mean when I say my work is about creating the moments we want in the future, in the present. If the goal is equity—that all of us get to enjoy our lives—then shouldn’t we say that we deserve that enjoyment now? That’s the dialogue happening in my head while I make this portrait. 

MV: Alongside these portraits, you’re also making an installation for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale that comes out of Educate and its focus on water, violence, and learning. How did that work grow out of the same questions?

SNS: Last spring, as I was thinking about different aspects of Educate, I started thinking about how water has been used as a weapon and a tool of segregation against Dalit students (fig. 7). Shailaja Paik also writes about this in her work on Dalit women’s education—how, when the British tried to include oppressed castes in schooling, caste Hindus were furious. Their main argument was that if their children studied with us and drank water in the same spaces, their children would be polluted. Water became the most contested site.⁵

And it continues. There was a case recently of a boy who drank from his principal’s bottle and was beaten. There was Indra Meghwal, a little child in Rajasthan who drank from the common source in school and was beaten to death by his teacher.⁶ I was thinking about the violence that water holds, of water as an archive. I was also thinking about Ambedkar’s experiences in school—No peon, no water—where he could only drink if a school official (peon) poured water for him from a height, and if that person didn’t come, he had no water. Water is the site of humiliation and the site of resistance. After Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s legendary Mahad Satyagraha in March 1927 at Chavdar Tank, the local caste Hindus were infuriated and decided to “purify” the water using panchgavya (a mixture of cow urine, cow dung, milk, ghee, and curd). Polluting the water in this way was preferred to the mere thought of human beings from a different caste touching it.⁷ An infuriated Dr. Ambedkar decided to burn the Manusmriti shortly after, on December 25, 1927, at Mahad.⁸

Inspired by this, I wanted to use that same material, water, to destroy the Manusmriti. I started working with unfired clay tiles, roughly A4 or letter size, so they read as “documents.” I went through the Manusmriti and picked verses that specifically talk about education and what should happen if someone from an oppressed caste dares to study, what punishments are prescribed. It was a very painful process to read and select those texts.

I developed these slabs and began printing the verses on them with henna, using a screen-printing process on the wet clay so the text would be very clean and legible. Then I built an installation where water slowly drips onto the tiles (fig. 8). As it keeps dripping, the text dissolves, the clay collapses, and it literally turns to mud.

I also made the tiles as a walkway (fig. 9). You have to step on them to enter the space. It feels like stepping on dry leaves—there’s this very soothing, ASMR-like cracking sound. It’s calming. You hear the water dripping, you feel this relief in your body. And then you look down and read what you’re stepping on, and it hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s the experience I wanted: the calm and the violence arriving together, in your body.

Over time, as people keep stepping, the text becomes less legible. I’m completely okay with that. In fact, I think some of these texts should never be archived. They should not exist. I don’t need to give you evidence of the atrocity; the fact that I had to create them just to destroy them should tell you enough. And this is coming from someone who cares deeply about archives, who loves holding on to pieces of history. The work at Kochi via Conflictorium displays only the walkway tiles on a 6 by 10-foot floor space.

MV: You’ve talked about wanting people to encounter this installation alongside the portraits from Educate. How do you imagine that relationship between stepping on the tiles and then seeing these images of Divya and Hrithik?

SNS: I’ve been thinking about the tiles and the portraits as two different but connected bodies of work. Any time someone wants to access the work in Educate and the portraits of rest, bliss, and release, I want them to do this act of stepping on the Manusmriti first. You shouldn’t be able to just walk in and enjoy the leisure of Dalit women without confronting what has been done to us. The tiles become a threshold, and you have to embody that act of destruction at least once. We have done this kind of work—a thousand times over, in a hundred different ways—before we allow ourselves a moment of rest. So as a viewer, at the very least, you have to do this much. 

And, as an artist, I also have to be careful not to reproduce that violence endlessly. The water only needs to be poured once. I don’t want to spend my life making and remaking these tiles so that they can be destroyed over and over. As much as it gives me pleasure to destroy the Manusmriti, I also have to liberate myself. 

The post “What do we allow Dalit women to do?”: Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar in Conversation with Maya Varma; Part I appeared first on post.

In looking at photographs of live models, plaster casts of Greek sculptures, and students on the website (figs. 1a and 1b) of the Sir J. J. School of Art (JJ) in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), one notices how the condition of the body and labor in relation to art is a haunting presence in 20th-century photography. Shot between the 1930s and 1990s by three notable photographers—Homai Vyarawalla (1913–2012), Foy Nissen (1931–2018), and Raghubir Singh (1942–1999)—the photographs I’ve chosen to highlight in this essay articulate the interface of art and labor over a long and unwieldy terrain.¹ I also analyze how these images capture the unstable status of student artists and its correspondence to the precarious trajectory of JJ.

This essay marks four phases in twentieth-century Bombay. It touches upon the nationalist heyday of the late colonial period, coinciding with the interwar years and the eventual onset of deindustrialization in the postcolonial city as evidenced by the Great Textile Mill Strike (1982–83). In doing so, it delineates the popularity of the Shiv Sena, the ethno-regionalist, right-wing-organization-turned-political party, from the 1960s to the ushering in of neoliberal reforms and state-sponsored violence in the early 1990s. The photographs discussed showcase the distressing circumstances of the city’s working poor as they came knocking on the doors of the art school. They represent a departure from prior illustrative studies, many of which depict the laborer as inseparable from their craft. These earlier visual renderings not only are rigid caste-based occupational studies, but also commodify and group people and goods for the colonial economy.² While the unnamed subjects of these types of images are categorized as “Santal Mother, Girl, or Man,” “Fishwomen [sic] of Bombay” (the native Koli community), or “Palanquin Bearers, Bombay” (who were mainly Dalit Mahars), the bourgeois photographers who took them are identified and thus accorded authorship (figs. 2 and 3).³

In the 20th century, as live models at JJ were placed in conversation with plaster casts of Greek sculptures, the worn human forms of the models underscored the stark valorization of art over labor. The photographs that capture this dichotomy evoke the continued incongruence between outmoded colonial art instruction and the parlous position of both fine artists and laborers at JJ and beyond.⁴ While nationalist sentiment swept through many aspects of life in the 1930s, the influx of Eurocentric methods extended unevenly to the temporary hiring of live models to proclaim an “authentic” Indian art. These live art sessions disembodied the model by decontextualizing and romanticizing the absented adivasi (tribal) figure or pious, religious woman as the symbolic native type, untainted by the trappings of colonial modernity (figs. 4 and 5).⁵ Anonymized men and women assembled as native types bore witness to the canonization of carving, painting, etching, and setting in stone—that is, to the colonial practice of classifying and essentializing select communities.⁶ While live models and art students were interminably devalued and alienated during deindustrialization, some of them, as seen in photographs by Vyarawalla and Singh, resisted being cast as the marginal figure by returning the subaltern gaze.

JJ was established in 1857 by cotton and opium merchant Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (1783–1859) to provide relief to and upskill displaced migrant workers in what was a ruthlessly competitive colonial market. However, it eventually cultivated only a preferential, cultured class.⁷ On the one hand, though JJ facilitated commissions for artists to design sculptural forms in city structures, a detachment from and dismissal of Indian artistry steadily grew among the Indian art circuit in the late 19th century for various reasons, including the difficulty in cultivating a sustained patronage.⁸ As artisan and agrarian populations were compelled to migrate in large numbers to Bombay and engage in laborious work in textile mills, construction, shipping, and other manufacturing industries, their lives were upended on an unprecedented scale by colonial expansion.⁹ On the other hand, while opportunities may have been available to some prospective students to apply to JJ, many of those gaining acceptance fell by the wayside as they faced extraordinary difficulties there, with only a handful later succeeding as fine artists.¹⁰ However, with concerted endeavors over time, JJ’s reputation improved, and students from other regions were able to avail of dedicated scholarships and thus to enroll.¹¹

JJ was premised on the bourgeois, individualistic apprenticeship structure that developed in response to industrialization in England and Europe from the mid-19th century onward. As with other colonial art schools in India, JJ exacerbated a sharp divide between traditional, familial, and community-based workshops and the colonial education system, which mandated English as the language of instruction with prerequisite training in geometry and arithmetic at the admissions stage.¹² These “reformist” requirements, along with education fees, systematically disqualified and disbarred poor and lower-caste artisans, thereby separating the field of craft from that of art. Even though craftspeople were considered important practitioners and knowledge-makers, they were viewed as mere copyists and only brought to art schools to exhibit their artistry and wares and assist students (fig. 6).¹³ Subsequently, an exclusive echelon of elite, upper-caste “gentleman” artists burgeoned as “intellectual tastemakers” at the colossal expense of artisans.¹⁴ Despite preliminary efforts to integrate them into the student body, artisans were apprehensive about foregoing their more dependable, albeit paltry agricultural earnings for non-remunerative education.¹⁵ Over time, their absence was transferred, disincarnated, and disseminated by illustrated publications circulated at JJ.¹⁶ Hence, in the photographs taken at JJ by Vyarawalla, Nissen, and Singh, displaced migrant workers make spectral appearances as live objects in art education.

Colonial art schools promoted scientific drawing via human anatomy lessons, and for this purpose, plaster casts of Greek sculptures were favored over live models.¹⁷ In the late 1930s, JJ student and photographer Vyarawalla pictured her contemporaries Rehana Mogul and Mani Turner creating a sculpture exemplifying such principles, including clarity of view and precision of measurement (fig. 7). In this striking photograph, Turner (on the far right), bends forward with calipers in hand to ascertain the proportion of her subject’s upper leg. His waist is also cinched with a measuring tape. For Vyarawalla and her classmates, who came from a host of backgrounds, JJ was extolled as an artistic abode for experimentation in photography and freedom for women.¹⁸ It was also projected as the ground for the reinvention of Indian artists, including women, at a time of soaring nationalism in late colonial Bombay.¹⁹ As a female photographer and student, Vyarawalla cancels the male gaze and gives space to her female subjects, downgrading the male model’s status and labor. 

Returning to the photograph, Mogul looks up, decidedly satisfied with her sculpture of the live, male model. While the work is not life-size, it is strategically located within the composition and thereby rendered the tallest figure. Thus, it is given prominence and a larger-than-life stature in the high-ceilinged JJ studio. Just as he posed for hours for the sculpting session, the model was forced to stand still as a photographed subject; nonetheless, he looks straight at the camera, holding our gaze.²⁰

The live model enacts the queries of renowned British industrial design educator Henry Cole (1808–1882). After the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, a world’s fair that heralded the colonial empire as the global pioneer in processing and harboring goods from around the world, Cole interrogated the worth of artisans. He questioned whether artisans should be expected to function as automated machines as per their employers’ demands, whether the commercial aspect of their labor could be compromised for skilled creations, and whether manufacturers recognized this and, moreover, were willing to invest money in educating artisans in order to foster a more skilled labor force.²¹ In figure 7, however, there is a split—the live model, who is no longer an artisan and thus deterritorialized, is at the service of Vyarawalla, Mogul, and Turner’s education. Yet, he does not entirely subdue himself to the machinery of sculpture-making and photography.

Vyarawalla directs a twofold production in which the live model has been relegated to a specimen, while Mogul and Turner are enhanced as artists. The deskilled laborer is utilized as raw material for a sculpture and thereby demarcated from the artists, who pay him no heed. Thus, a neat and graded symmetry unravels itself. While both Mogul and the sculpture as a finished product occupy the foreground, the model and Turner are arranged in the background to demonstrate various stages of sculpting. The two female sculptors are on either side, absorbed and tending to their respective props, one artificial but more exalted than the human male model. 

The model is not lionized like a permanent fixture of JJ, such as the plaster casts of Greek sculptures or the students’ sculpted figurines, but instead beckoned to JJ whenever there is a need for his muted and sampled presence. He represents an eerie and curious amalgam of the “native type” and the Greek ideal but still stands out.²² His look, which evinces personhood and a cynical consciousness, defies and pierces the composition, as he does not conform to an anonymized live model. ²³ His gritty stare reflects the long-standing labor networks of caste, kinship, and village through which single male workers, like him, navigated the workplace and neighborhood in a fluctuating economy.²⁴ In this regard, the long stick that he holds—archetypal of idealized “native type” imagery—comes into view in figure 8.²⁵ The man’s encounter at JJ underpins the grave situation of “mobile incarceration,” whereby badli (temporary) workers would have been picked from designated spots in the city and brought to the school to earn an income.²⁶

A formalist and painterly rendition of a sketching session attended by mostly male students, with a few female students scattered across the class, is framed by Vyarawalla in figure 9.²⁷ In this image, a sari-clad woman seated on a raised platform encircled by the students models with her hands clasped on her lap and her body on silent display. Though this is the only photograph of a live, clothed female model discussed here, women often modeled nude at JJ.²⁸

The Postcolonial Moment

Forty years later, three male students engrave busts modeled after a middle-aged man sitting slouched on a raised platform (fig. 10), a scene captured by Foy Nissen, the prolific photographer, writer, and amateur historian of Bombay who was of Danish origin. This oblique composition captures the static disembodiment of the alienated model, who stares vacantly into a clutter of half-open and half-closed window shutters.²⁹ An unaligned and haphazard path of abject unemployment and deindustrialization stretches out before the live model, whose corporeal presence is as bereft and hollow as the sculptures underway.³⁰ He ekes out a living as an expendable live model, a still life always in supply. At the same time, we can discern some changes in the student composition at JJ in the late 20th century.³¹

In 1955, steps were taken to make the art school more inclusive, with 5 percent of seats reserved for candidates from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds (“Backward Classes”) based on an entrance test.³² Following an arduous struggle by the diverse political base of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti (Unification of Maharashtra Committee), the State of Maharashtra was formed along linguistic lines, with Bombay as its capital in 1960. However, from the late 1960s onward, the Shiv Sena’s regionalist but wide socioeconomic membership, goaded by its middle-class leadership and driven by increasing financial instability in Bombay, violently advocated for and took direct action to secure ethnicity-based job reservations for the local Marathi population.³³ Since 1970, JJ has instituted monthly scholarships and fee exemptions for students, thus attracting a broader pool of applicants.

However, in 1984, the year in which Nissen’s photograph was shot, Bombay was marked by two imbricated major events: The nationwide imposition of the Emergency (1975–77), when emergency powers were applied across the country, paved the way for the brutal sundering of robust labor politics and history in the city.³⁴ This was ramified by the Great Textile Mill Strike, which accelerated neoliberal reforms.³⁵ After this labor stoppage, mills in the city shuttered, driving more than a hundred thousand workers into casual, informal employment. In this atmosphere of economic uncertainty, scores of disenchanted Marathi workers were galvanized and girded by the right-wing, anti-migrant, and anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Shiv Sena.

Color and a Postmodern Critique 

The pall of deindustrialization hangs heavy in the downcast eyes and static body of the elderly live model captured by Raghubir Singh in figure 11.³⁶ A dire juncture at JJ is presented via this photograph of an emaciated, aging man who, seemingly diminished and disenfranchised, is clad in an oversized kurta, dhoti, and turban. His frail and bent frame is at odds with the plaster casts of classical, nude Greek male sculptures symbolizing Eurocentric ideals of the male form that surround him. Moreover, the color photograph offers an incisive reading of the problematic continuation of this “educational” tradition and artisanal and scholastic disempowerment at JJ well into the late 20th century.³⁷

Singh composed this aberrant scene to unsettle notions of colonial grandeur and to foreground its oppressive hangover in the lackluster confines of JJ. The ongoing, ill-fitting presence at JJ in 1991 of casts of Greek nude sculptures tells us of its unrelenting durée in the postcolonial city. Singh has orchestrated a disharmony between these two teaching aids—the live model, an “ethnographic type” (again holding a stick) of which he was critical, and Greek sculpture—and that of art students, who represent a third category. The students are not portrayed as dutifully immersed in a conventional classroom setting; instead, like the model, they stay on, compelled to “wait” and remain on-site.

The young male student pictured with slumped shoulders and his hands on his back evokes restlessness and unease. He is seemingly caught unawares, despite the reassuring hand of a friend on his shoulder. The intrusive photographer draws us in, setting up a trenchant triangular network of gazes as he inhabits the place of student-artist and intervenes as scathing outsider-spectator—in effect, creating a visual critique that extends beyond the male student in the photograph to encompass the general dissent among students and alumni regarding outmoded education at JJ, among other issues. He constructs a postmodern critique, arresting the apparent friction at JJ by transfixing the male student’s consternation and awkward stance within his own field of view.³⁸ Both the institution and its students faced numerous obstacles well into the 20th century—including the unaffordability of art materials, a dearth of faculty, low attendance, outdated teaching methods, a lack of residential facilities for students, and even an attempt to close the school.³⁹ The apparent wariness of the confounded student and the constrictive environment speak to the repeated demands of students and alumni to revise syllabi, upgrade infrastructure, and introduce English-language tutoring. In the course of time, some of these measures were undertaken.⁴⁰

The continued veneration and aegis of objects over labor at JJ tie together labor and education through the disparate gazes and positions held by the photographed subjects whom Vyarawalla, Nissen, and Singh capture and bring to our attention. Their photographs unfold the dynamics and impact of art education and labor beyond the precincts of the art school, highlighting the convergence of social inequities and the scarcity of resources.⁴¹ They infer a narrative of the reverberating consequences of colonial knowledge and the concomitant making and entrenching of hierarchies, in which the resources necessary for artmaking became privileged enclaves unto their own, with hardly any public or private intervention. The indigent labor of the city has continued to serve as live models well into the present day, as demonstrated by photographs on JJ’s website (figs. 1a and 1b).⁴² Disaggregated, disarmed, and appropriated by art schools, artmaking, and the accumulation of capital in the city at large, the below-minimum wages paid to said live models were recently upgraded.⁴³

The JJ studio portraits encapsulate interconnected points of disproportionate modernity in a city teetering on the precipice of chronic unrest. They are distinct traces enunciating the poignant state of affairs within the school’s lofty walls and sunlit, capacious interiors for live models and students. Though monumental scale allows for the bodily autonomy of labor and studenthood in Vyarawalla and Singh’s photos (figs. 7, 8, and 11), in figure 9, by Vyarawalla, they are dwarfed and made a diminutive spectacle of. The photos by Nissen and Singh (figs. 10 and 11) show a consistent decline in both sitters. Together, as apparitions, they carry the burden of coerced historical experience, enduring the industrial capital model upon leaving a stagnant rural economy. Thus, the drawn-out process of mill closures, the protracted affair of deterritorialization and depoliticization of the urban poor, and the hastening of liberalization and right-wing propaganda—enabled by the Emergency—were inextricably coterminous with the pedagogical inertia of JJ. ⁴⁴

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Paul Galloway: An aspect of your work that intrigues me is that it is steeped in the visual culture of India—and Mumbai, in particular. Can you give us a bit of information on your upbringing, and how the rapid changes you witnessed growing up in the 1980s–90s impacted your development as artists?

Sameer Kulavoor: We grew up in the northern suburbs of Bombay, a small world in the 1980s–90s. But things changed very fast after 1990. That’s when the government introduced economic liberalization that created major changes that meant, suddenly, there were brands we had never seen in India—like McDonald’s or Levi’s or MTV. A lot of younger people also started getting more interested in what was happening outside the country. So, I think [that] that period of the ’90s was very critical to a lot of these cities around India, not just Bombay. The farmlands gave way to more housing apartments and infrastructure. The road that used to be kind of like the grazing patch for donkeys became a major thoroughfare, and today there is a metro line passing [through] there. And our family was unique because we come from a Hindu-Muslim interfaith marriage.

Zeenat Kulavoor: Our personal background also shaped our perspective. We come from an interfaith family—a Muslim from South India and a Hindu, a Gujarati from Bombay—and there was a class difference between our parents as well. Growing up in that environment taught us acceptance at many levels. Even language played a role: My maternal side used the Gujarati language and script, while my father’s side spoke Beary Bashe—a dialect that is a mix of Malayalam, Kannada, and Tulu, but it has no written script. At home, we spoke English, mixed with Gujarati and Beary Bashe, while outside, we used Hindi in daily life. Later, at art school, we picked up Marathi, which we now use regularly to maneuver the city. And after I married my partner, whose Mangalorean family speaks Tulu and uses Kannada, the linguistic mix expanded even further. This multicultural and multilingual context is inseparable from who we are and inevitably influences how we see and create.

PG: Can you give me a sense of your professional lives before you started Bombay Duck Designs? Sameer, you worked in advertising, right?

SK: Before I got into art school, I used to do a lot of cartoons and illustrations for my college magazine. Between 1998 and 2000, during the dot-com boom, I joined a design team on a website. I ended up learning a lot of software, and I started to understand animation using Flash. At that point I continued freelancing with advertising agencies working for brands. Simultaneously, I was also involved with the indie music scene in Bombay. That led to me designing album covers during that decade for friends and the circle. I continued freelancing until 2008, when I formalized Bombay Duck Designs. 

ZK: Pre art school, I was drawn to scripts and languages through my family and loved collecting everyday objects and visual ephemera—labels, wrappers, tickets—elements that later informed the Everyday India project. At art school, I majored in typography, which brought these interests together, and focused extensively on Urdu—a natural choice given my background and fascination with scripts carrying layered histories. After graduating, I worked on Urdu-related projects with various agencies before freelancing with Sameer. We began with an album cover and soon moved on to larger projects, including one of the early large-scale independent music festivals of India, where we designed everything from the identity to the stages and environments.

PG: I think the name “Bombay Duck” (a commonly eaten fish native to the waters in and around Bombay) perfectly encapsulates your design ethos, which is rooted in the everyday culture of India. This ethos comes across in your amazing zines, and I wonder . . . what drew you to that format? 

SK: I think it came from a general frustration with how design projects work. Many times, I felt that a certain thing I had created for a commercial project wasn’t doing the idea justice. That drew me to the medium of zines, where I could talk about something that means a lot to me without compromising on how I’d like to express it. In a sense, self-publishing laid the foundation for my own art practice.

ZK: The first one we made was Zeroxwallah zine, which talks about Bombay photocopy shops. I remember [that] when we started making this book, it was simply because the subject, the format, and the effort excited us. We decided to make about 50 copies, show them to people, and see how it went.

SK: Our college was very close to Fort (a neighborhood in the city), which has a high concentration of photocopy shops. And we found it fascinating because all of these shops have the same branding and color scheme. Every one [of them] sticks to yellow and black; every one [of them] has a similar way of using bold type. So, the idea of creating a photocopied zine that talks about photocopy shops felt very meta and interesting. 

PG: What did the people working in these shops think when they were printing this book about themselves?

ZK: While photocopying the first few pages, they didn’t understand what we were doing. Eventually, when we were binding the book together, they asked, “Why are you doing this? Who’s going to buy this?”

SK: We took pictures of the exteriors of certain shops from that area, and the workers spotted rival shops. “These guys are our competitors . . . why have you featured them?” And then there is this very interesting phenomenon where people in India use the [company name] “Xerox” as a verb or a noun “Can you xerox this?” or “Please give me a xerox of this sheet.” The Xerox company objected to the use of their name on shops, and so shop sign makers simply repainted the X with a Z.

PG: A theme that comes across in much of your work is a focus on taxonomies of visual culture of India—an indexing of commerce and architecture and social life. What is it about this everyday visual experience that fascinates you both?

SK: When you look at any city, you’re trying to decode [its] layers. So, the first thing that you see is shop or road signage. And then there are walls covered with graphics, posters, or public art; building facades and surfaces that may be of a certain material—brick, concrete, tiles and so on—or construction sites covered by metal sheets, debris protection fabric, or blue tarpaulin sheets. There are several layers depending on your vantage point. While it may seem like absolute chaos to someone who is not familiar with it, for us it became a way to understand the logic and chronology of how things form. When your senses are overloaded, you want to break it down into understandable parts. 

ZK: We’re simply trying to make sense of the country and the city in our own way, and that comes out in the form of zines, artworks, and murals. Take the blue tarpaulin sheet, or tadpatri as we call it locally, for example.

SK: The blue tarpaulin sheet is omnipresent when you’re going through the daily rigor of life in Bombay. But no one has the time or the mental bandwidth to dwell on these things. 

ZK: Yet, you can look at this piece of blue plastic and see that it’s significant. It reflects socioeconomic conditions, ways of living, and the resourcefulness of people who adapt and creatively use this material.

PG: Your practices make me think of others who have tried to tackle the complexities of urbanism. In his research for the font Gotham, typographer Tobias Frere-Jones photographed thousands of building addresses and signs across Manhattan, documenting the diversity of letterforms in the wild in order to distill vernacular typography into one typeface that would represent the ethos of New York City. You two take an alternative approach and embrace the diversity and wide range of not only typefaces and languages but also visual cultures that you find. I think that, in a way, that’s an embrace of chaos. 

SK: We never consciously set out with the idea to embrace chaos, it just happened. The other aspect to this is that there is currently a politically rooted attempt to homogenize culture in India—like imposing Hindi in the South Indian states, for example. Such impositions or blanket rules, we feel, are dangerous. It becomes a responsibility to show people the richness of this so-called chaos. There is a lot of work to be done to make Bombay and India more livable in certain parts, but this aspect of plurality or multiplicity is part of our DNA.  

PG: In the dramatic structures of your Metromorphosis project here, we see the churn of history, architecture, and community that happens in all urban environments sped up, with chaotic accretions and evidence of past lives. What do you think we risk losing when we pursue order and homogeneity to its furthest extent?

SK: Architect and academic Rahul Mehrotra in his text about Metromorphosis notes a kind of emulation that is commonly occurring: “The presence of the ‘edifice complex’ in Manhattan, New York, that grew naturally out of the accumulation of capital then circulated around the globe. Singapore wanted to be the Manhattan of Asia and then Shanghai wanted to be the Singapore of China. Politicians and Capitalists in India want to make Mumbai Shanghai and then, for example Nasik aspires to be Mumbai and the small towns near Nasik then aspire to be Nasik and so on.”¹ Homogenization can consume culture and texture—and not just within India. This loss of identity in design is a complicated issue and needs a nuanced understanding and more conversations. We talk about this in our work, trying to show people that the richness of what India is is at risk in this flattening of everything from architecture to graphic design. 

PG: I think your interest in the visual taxonomy of India functions similarly to the many efforts across the world to preserve endangered languages. Particularly with [the exhibition] Everyday India, it’s like you’re documenting a visual dialect. Is this something that you see as a mission for yourselves?

SK: Recognizing multiplicity and plurality is a recurring factor in our work—while also not getting nostalgic or sentimental about the past. And I think we want to keep that factor alive in our work, especially in this atmosphere, where there is a real risk of things being wiped out. We are excited about the future and how it can be shaped.

ZK: We feel that deeply these days, which is why Everyday India felt so important. It gave us a chance to do something we might not have done otherwise—to make people notice the multiplicity around them. We’re always photographing things, posters, architecture, fragments of design that catch our eye. It’s part of our daily rhythm, something we both do in our own ways. The show allowed us to share that, spark conversations, and see how everyone else was feeling. 

PG: I think a strength of your practice is this idea of looking at the world from the ground up rather than from an aerial view. Because, as you say, when viewed from above, everything becomes flattened, whereas from the ground, everything is rich and full of texture and variety. 

SK: Having such a vantage point becomes important in these kinds of scenarios. We walk a lot. We’re on the ground level a lot. We don’t live in a 40-floor high-rise; we like to be grounded and keep our eyes and ears open to what’s happening at the street level. It’s very easy to find ways to cut off the chaos and have a very comfortable life. A lot of decisions we make in our day-to-day life, like where do you want your studio to be or where do you want to go for a trip—those kinds of very personal decisions are shaped by the logic of not wanting to be cut off from the ground level. It percolates into our daily lives. It’s a habit that you want to live a certain kind of life, to be able to do a certain kind of work. As we grow older, I think, for us, it becomes important to hold on to that.

This conversation stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024-2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here.

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The concept of establishing a museum in a remote region of India—one that is not only geographically isolated but also prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes and cyclones—presents a complex set of challenges. Yet, it also offers a rare opportunity to engage deeply with the traditional knowledge systems of local communities. Located in Ajrakhpur, just outside the city of Bhuj in Kutch, Gujarat, in western India, the Living and Learning Design Centre (LLDC), founded in 2016, exemplifies this duality (fig. 1). Conceived as a multipurpose cultural institution, LLDC is dedicated to the preservation, revival, and continuity of the diverse craft traditions of Kutch.¹ Situated on a nine-acre campus, it houses three galleries as well as craft studios and educational spaces that collectively serve as a platform for cultural transmission and innovation.

Tracing the development of LLDC, this essay focuses on how indigenous systems of knowledge informed its planning, construction, collections, infrastructure, and modes of audience engagement. Using LLDC as a case study, it explores how the model of a global museum can be thoughtfully translated to a local context—one that is shaped by environmental precarity, cultural richness, and community resilience.

Building Trust: The Elders as Gatekeepers of Knowledge

The seed of the Living and Learning Design Centre was planted more than five decades ago in a chance encounter between the late Chanda Shroff (1933–2016) and women from the Ahir and Meghwaad Gurjar communities.² In 1969, Shroff traveled overland from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) to Dhaneti in Kutch to assist with famine-relief efforts.³ For the fifth consecutive year, Kutch—the second largest district in India—was experiencing severe drought that had resulted in an acute need for humanitarian assistance as many residents faced starvation. Despite these hardships, women arriving to collect food aid remained impeccably dressed and were hesitant to accept charity. They had nothing to exchange for the food parcels they received as they had sold most of their belongings—including valuable embroidered heirlooms passed down through generations—just to survive. 

Their pride and skills caught the attention of Shroff. Recognizing the need for a long-term solution, she asked if they would create embroidered designs on plain saris that she would then sell in Bombay, returning the proceeds of any sales directly to them. The women agreed to participate under the condition that the patterns and motifs would be outlined by Parmaben Balasara, an aarekhni artist and their designated designer.⁴ This was Shroff’s initiation into how traditional crafts, such as embroideries, were not just borne from women who sat in their homes and created them, but rather from a regulated system that relied on the wisdom and knowledge of elders from their community. Without the support of Parmaben, Shroff could not have engaged these communities (fig. 2), and it was through her steadfast support that the initial seeds were planted for LLDC, building trust with the communities through their first organization, Shrujan.⁵

Engaging Communities: The Need for a Mobile Museum

In the late 1990s, Chanda Shroff launched a precursor to the Living and Learning Design Centre through an innovative mobile museum housed in a repurposed bus, initially named the Design Center On Wheels. This initiative was instrumental in introducing the concept of a museum to the rural craft communities of Kutch, many of whom had limited exposure to formal cultural institutions. Rather than imposing an external model, the mobile museum served as a dialogic platform—demonstrating how a museum could emerge from within the community’s own knowledge systems.

The Design Center On Wheels featured a rotating display of specially commissioned panels and garments, showcasing traditional patterns and techniques in contemporary formats, all painstakingly hand-stitched by women from the various communities of Kutch (figs. 3–6) 

Encouraging the use of traditional stitches in a modern color palette and moving beyond clothing and textiles were crucial steps in teaching the women how, through the eye of a needle, to reinvigorate and expand their cultural histories using their own knowledge and experience. Between 1997 – 2003 they created over 1000 embroidered panels and over 600 garments, in a range of designs and colorways, establishing a rich visual archive of stitches and motifs. From 2003 to 2012 the Design Center On Wheels travelled across Kutch, exhibiting a rotating selection of these panels. This mobile museum not only documented craft heritage, but it also inspired renewed interest among younger generations, who began to see their cultural practices as valuable and evolving (figs. 5, 6). 

By visiting more than 100 villages and engaging more than 20,000 community members, the mobile museum played a critical role in the instruction, retention, and revitalization of an intangible cultural heritage. It laid the groundwork for LLDC’s later development by fostering a sense of ownership and participation among artisans and by demonstrating that museums could be truly inclusive and rooted in lived experience.

In 2006, Chanda Shroff was honored with the international Rolex Award for Enterprise for preserving, protecting, and safeguarding the unique embroidery heritage of Kutch and for empowering rural craftswomen. Her pioneering efforts were recognized as “one of the most successful models of social entrepreneurship in her country.”⁶

Building the Living and Learning Design Centre

With the support of the prestigious Rolex award, Chanda Shroff advanced her vision by establishing the Living and Learning Design Centre in Ajrakhpur—a village founded by the Khatri community after the devastating 2001 earthquake in Kutch. The Khatris, renowned for their intricate ajrakh block printing, had previously lived in the village of Dhamadka.⁷ However, the earthquake altered that village’s natural water sources, changing their mineral composition, which negatively affected the quality of the dyes produced there. Seeking better conditions, many Khatris relocated to Ajrakhpur, a site near Bhuj with a more suitable water supply for their craft.

Recognizing the potential of this new site, the Khatris encouraged Shroff to consider acquiring land in the same area, which subsequently led to the procurement of the plot. The location was selected not only for its proximity to the artisans but also for its potential to host a multifunctional campus. Through a process of community dialogue and environmental assessment, the land was eventually prepared for construction. Importantly, the acquisition of this property involved ongoing community collaboration and consultation, outlining the vision and plans for the site, ensuring that the initiative was embraced as a collective effort rather than an external imposition.

The acquisition of the land marked a pivotal transition for LLDC—from mobile outreach to a permanent institutional presence. It signaled a long-term commitment to the region and laid the foundation for a built environment that reflects the values of resilience, inclusivity, and cultural continuity. By embedding the institution within the living context of one of Kutch’s most iconic craft traditions—ajrakh—LLDC reinforced its mission to support and sustain artisan life through meaningful, place-based cultural infrastructure.

The architectural design of LLDC had to emphasize structural resilience, incorporating earthquake-resistant technologies alongside vernacular building practices. In doing so, it addressed environmental risks while maintaining the region’s architectural heritage. The design team, working with local engineers and artisans, aimed to ensure the building could withstand future seismic activity.

Locally sourced materials were combined with reinforced structural systems to create a hybrid approach that enhanced durability while preserving cultural continuity. The campus layout—including galleries, studios, and open courtyards—was designed to support rainwater harvesting and to optimize natural ventilation and lighting, thus reducing reliance on mechanical systems and promoting environmental sustainability. For thermal stability, the design team used bricks made from lime and fly ash. Lime mortar was prepared on-site by grinding lime with sand and cement, and this gauged mortar was used for the masonry work. Natural lime plaster, applied using traditional methods, was used in the interiors of two galleries.⁸

Although Kutch experiences a predominantly hot and arid climate, winter nights can be very cold. To regulate temperature extremes, the building plan incorporates passive cooling strategies. Fenestrations of varying sizes on the west and south sides allow winter sunlight while minimizing summer heat and enhancing ventilation. Shaded passageways offer cooler zones, and rainwater harvesting tanks collect approximately 500,000 liters annually, supplemented by onsite wastewater management.

By embedding resilience into its architecture, LLDC exemplifies how cultural institutions can be both context-sensitive and future-ready. The building itself serves as a pedagogical tool, demonstrating how indigenous knowledge and modern engineering can converge to create spaces that are safe, sustainable, and symbolically rich.

Documenting the Collections 

Alongside the building of the Living and Learning Design Centre, work was begun on documenting the collections in readiness for the gallery displays. Of particular importance were the specially commissioned embroidered panels initiated through the Design Center On Wheels. Each piece was systematically photographed and catalogued, including details such as the maker’s name, community affiliation, and pattern type, preserving the unique identities and cultural significance of each motif, such as the scorpion at the midway point on either side of the central medallion in figure 5. Oral interviews were conducted in Kutchi—a dialect that has no written script—and were later translated into Gujarati and then English. These interview transcripts were also digitized to ensure comprehensive recordkeeping. This time-consuming process could only be overseen through locally recruited teams composed of members of the communities themselves. In doing so, LLDC has been able to capture and contextualize some of the region’s most intricate embroidery as markers of its ecosystems and holistic way of living, heralding a break from previous museological practices. Importantly, many of the team at LLDC are multilingual and have the advantage of being able to speak Kutchi. By sitting with the community members, sharing food, and listening to intergenerational stories of how their crafts have changed over time, they have slowly collected facts, piecing them together over days, months, and years. To date, the communities that are being documented (an ongoing process with varying degrees of completion) are the Ahir (within which are the subgroups of Pranthadiya, Machhoya, Boricha), Meghwaad Gurjar, Sodha and Jadeja, Rabaari (including the subgroups Debariya, Kaachhi, Vagadiya, and Bhopa), Meghwaad Maaru, Jat (Garasiya, Danetah, Fakirani, and Haajani), Rau Node, Mutwa, and Halepotra. 

By actively recruiting staff from within these communities, LLDC has been able to ensure and conserve a granular level of knowledge that has been authentically verified at each stage. This practice remains ongoing, safeguarding cultural heritage through grassroots representation and local expertise. Additionally, the collection continues to expand through the acquisition and donations of personal traditional garments and artifacts from the communities as well as those made for commercial sale and the repatriation of antique garments and crafts from Kutch, previously held in Western public and private collections.

Storing the Collections

The collections at the Living and Learning Design Centre are housed in purpose-built, specialized facilities, with the natural materials of the building and construction serving as active agents, conducive to regulating the temperature and light levels. To ensure the collections are protected from pest infestations, natural preventive methods that use local indigenous insect-repelling herbs are employed. Since traditional Western materials like Melinex are unsuitable for the climate, finely woven unbleached cotton and herb-filled pouches are placed within the storage units, and to minimize contamination, visitors and staff must enter barefoot: No outside footwear is allowed inside the archive.⁹

Programming at the Living and Learning Design Centre

The Craft Studio and Hands-On gallery at LLDC serve as dynamic spaces for the transmission, experimentation, and celebration of Kutch’s rich craft traditions. Designed not merely as a production unit but also as pedagogical and collaborative environments, these spaces facilitate a range of activities bridging traditional knowledge and contemporary practice.

Workshops are regularly conducted in the Hands-On gallery, bringing together master artisans, apprentices, students, and visiting designers. These sessions focus on skills transmission, enabling younger generations to learn intricate techniques such as ajrakh block printing, embroidery, felting, spinning, weaving, and dyeing. The studio also functions as a site for experimentation, as a place in which artisans are encouraged to innovate with materials, motifs, and forms while remaining rooted in traditional aesthetics.

Community engagement is central to the Craft Studio’s ethos. Local residents and artisans are invited to observe and participate in open-studio days, fostering a sense of shared ownership and cultural pride. Collaborative projects with design institutions and nongovernmental organizations create opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue and economic empowerment. Through its multifaceted programming, the Craft Studio and Hands-On gallery exemplify LLDC’s mission to sustain living traditions by embedding them in spaces of learning, creativity, and community interaction.

Currently, there are approximately 30 active crafts in Kutch, encompassing textiles, vegetal materials, metals, and pottery. Each craft is maintained and utilized, with traditional techniques adapted to suit the available natural resources. LLDC includes these practices as a central aspect of its programming.

Throughout the year, various programs take place, featuring live and performing arts such as dance, drama, music, and film screenings as well as academic conferences and award ceremonies that recognize the work of local artisans. The Winter Festival is an annual major event bringing together traditional craft communities from across India.

Sustaining the Longevity of Craft: Community and Cultural Resilience

The Living and Learning Design Centre offers a compelling model for rethinking museum practice in rural and environmentally sensitive contexts. The pioneering work of the late Chanda Shroff continues under the leadership of her daughter, Ami Shroff. By integrating indigenous knowledge systems into its architectural design, curatorial strategies, and community engagement, LLDC challenges conventional museological frameworks that often prioritize static preservation over dynamic cultural continuity. Its establishment reflects a deliberate effort to create a space that is not only resilient to seismic and climatic disruptions but also responsive to the sociocultural fabric of the region.

The Centre’s infrastructure—characterized by its use of local materials, vernacular construction techniques, and participatory planning—demonstrates a contextually grounded approach to sustainability and resilience. Furthermore, LLDC’s hybrid functionality as a museum, educational hub, and craft studio positions it as a site of both cultural preservation and economic empowerment. It facilitates intergenerational knowledge transfer and supports the livelihoods of artisans engaged in traditional crafts such as embroidery, weaving, and block printing (to name but a few), each one a complex and historically rich practice unique to the region.

In translating a global institutional model into a locally embedded framework, LLDC contributes to a broader discourse on culturally responsive heritage infrastructure. It underscores the importance of ecological sensitivity, community participation, and cultural specificity in the development of museums that serve not only as repositories of history but also as living systems of learning and innovation. As such, LLDC offers valuable insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to design inclusive and resilient cultural institutions in the Global South.

This essay stems from the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Bombay/Mumbai initiative at MoMA. The 2024-2026 Bombay/Mumbai research program was conceived and organized by Ananya Sikand (C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow) and Lucy Gallun (Curator, The Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography). Read more about C-MAP here.

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Among the topics that were discussed were assemblies of the human and other-than-human as collectives, assemblies of materials into collections, and assemblies of spaces and places into shared worlds. The speakers drew from their engagement with exhibitions, films, public programs, and cultural institutions to map how these forms of assemblies realized the poetic potential of coming together through difference. Assemblies in Uncertain Times offered an opportunity to imagine other futures together, complicating established linearities and teleologies.

The 2025 C-MAP Seminar took place on June 11–12, 2025 and was conceived by Diana Iturralde, Cisneros Institute Research Fellow; Beya Othmani, C-MAP Africa Fellow; Carlos Quijon Jr., C-MAP Southeast & East Asia Fellow; and Ananya Sikand, C-MAP Bombay/Mumbai Fellow with support from the International Program: Marta Dansie, Department Coordinator; Jay Levenson, Director; Ksenia Nouril, Assistant Director; and Elena Pérez-Ardá López, C-MAP Program Coordinator. The C-MAP Seminar is organized in collaboration with the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America at MoMA.

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While Tibet has ceased to exist as an independent nation, Tibetan material heritage continues to be extensively circulated, collected, displayed, and interpreted in museums, the art market, and academia (fig. 1). Exhibitions of “Tibetan art” remain a regular occurrence in the exhibition circuit. Moreover, Tibetan objects are omnipresent in auctions of Asian art every season at all the major international auction houses and continue to fetch record prices in the global art market. This hypervisibility of Tibetan objects in museums and the market raises a fundamental question: Why is so much of Tibet’s material heritage circulating outside Tibet, displaced from its original place of worship and practice, and so far removed from Tibetans? This phenomenon is succinctly captured by Clare Harris, who notes, “The bulk of Tibet’s portable cultural heritage has been retained everywhere other than Tibet, and is now most readily at the disposal of everyone other than Tibetans.”⁵ Hence, further attention to the provenance of Tibetan collections dispersed across the world in public and private collections is warranted, particularly to assess the colonial entanglement of sacred Tibetan objects. 

The complex colonial entanglement of museum collections in the Global North has led to a growing body of scholarship suggesting that museums must engage with the communities to which these objects originally belonged as a form of symbolic reparation and restorative justice.⁶ This practice has been gaining recognition and momentum, with various attempts to “transform” the museum or, at the very least, alter the relationship between the museum and “communities of origin,” a move that has been deemed “one of the most important developments in the history of museums.”⁷ However, to this day, there is an acute absence of Tibetans in museums, whether as curators, interpreters, collaborators, or other agents in the construction of knowledge and representation or as members of the audience for museum displays.

“Doubly colonial” Tibet: An Inheritance of Loss

In her seminal text The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet (2012), Harris highlights that the hypervisibility of Tibetan objects is due to the extensive scale of displacement of Tibetan heritage from the Tibetan landscape and people through repeated waves of extraction of objects in a “doubly colonial” context, that of both British and Chinese looting in the twentieth century.⁸ She articulates that Tibet is a possibly unique example of being “doubly colonial” as before the People’s Republic of China assimilated Tibet, it witnessed a British colonialist intervention in the form of the Younghusband “Expedition” of 1903–4. These repeated waves of pillaging have physically deprived Tibet of significant quantities of its material heritage, which is now found primarily in Western or Chinese museums and private collections worldwide, not in Tibet itself.

The Younghusband Mission was a British military campaign sanctioned by Lord Curzon (1859–1952), who served as viceroy of India (1898–1905), due to rising anxieties over perceived Russian influence in Tibet. There was no intention to annex Tibet into the British Empire, but the aim was to force the Tibetans to end their suspected dealings with Russia and to establish a dominant British influence in Tibet, an agenda some have deemed “almost entirely bogus.”⁹ Strikingly, the Younghusband Mission was primarily a military campaign, deploying the latest technology available to the British at the time: four field guns firing shrapnel shells and two Maxim machine guns capable of firing 760 rounds per minute. To illustrate the scale of senseless violence and plunder that took place during this invasion, let’s revisit the infamous “Battle of Guru,” known among Tibetans as the “Massacre of Chumik Shenko” (fig. 2).

On March 31, 1904, the incursion of British forces was halted by Tibetan forces in the valley of Guru in southern Tibet. According to Tibetan sources, the British proposed that as a precondition for negotiations, all Tibetan soldiers must unload their weapons and extinguish the fuses of their muskets.¹⁰ While preparations for negotiations were taking place, British forces strategically positioned their machine guns on nearby hills and surrounded the Tibetan army from three directions. According to Tibetan government records, when the British opened fire, 523 Tibetans were killed and 300 more were wounded.¹¹ While there is debate about what started the skirmish, it is apparent that the British army used a strategic maneuver to outflank and “box in” the Tibetan army, attacking them from three sides and firing over 15,000 rounds of ammunition on retreating Tibetans.¹² British forces pursued Tibetans for 12 miles and continued to kill and maim them.¹³ After this massacre, many battle trophies were collected from the bodies of the dead or from surrendered Tibetan soldiers, including earrings, gau (box amulets), bandolier belts, weapons, and clothing.

After seizing key strategic positions in Tibet, such as the monastery-city of Gyantse, British officers committed what Patrick French has termed “casual robbery” in deserted monasteries or houses.¹⁴ What began as collecting battle trophies at Guru became frenzied looting among the ranks at every available opportunity, but the expedition later followed a formalized protocol to sift through the material, which would, in appearance, be “a more reputable form of collecting for intellectual pursuits.”¹⁵ According to Harris, the Younghusband Mission is significant because it created a desire and appetite for Tibetan objects in the market.¹⁶ Even before Younghusband’s military campaign reached its conclusion in Lhasa, a steady stream of looted Tibetan objects had been trickling into Great Britain, some of which fetched high prices at Christie’s auction house in London.¹⁷

The state-led destruction of Tibetan cultural heritage peaked later, during the Cultural Revolution (1967–77), when according to Tibetan sources, more than 6,000 Tibetan temples and monasteries were ransacked and partially or fully destroyed mainly by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).¹⁸ During this purge of Tibetan culture, sacred Buddhist sites such as the Jokhang temple in Lhasa were desecrated (fig. 3). This systematic desecration was through the destruction of venerated sacred images of Buddha, Bodhisattvas and protective spirits; the burning of precious manuscripts, manuscript printing blocks and thangka paintings as cooking fuel; and the turning of the area into a pig slaughterhouse and toilet by the PLA Garrison Command.¹⁹ Sam van Schaik notes this destruction was a “carefully planned operation” as each site was first inventoried, with “all precious stones and metal objects carefully labelled and prepared for transportation to Beijing.”²⁰ The desecration and destruction of the Jokhang temple are illustrative of what happened to many sacred temples and monasteries all over Tibet. 

In an overview of different case studies on plundered cultural properties for the International Committee of Museums (ICOM) publication Countering Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods: The Global Challenge of Protecting the World’s Heritage (2015), Sam Hardy argues that the loss and destruction of Tibetan heritage under the Chinese state was “incalculable both in terms of culture and in terms of sheer quantity.”²¹ For instance, in the 1990s, monasteries in Tibet were targeted by Chinese gangs who “killed monks in their violent attempts to remove statues from monasteries” so that they could profit from the appetite for Tibetan material heritage in the global art market.²²  In 2008, the Chinese police confiscated cultural assets from Tibetan communities as a punishment for the Tibetan uprising, and this was evidenced by a marked flow of Tibetan cultural material onto the antiquities market.²³

The destruction and dispossession of Tibetan material heritage has been acutely experienced by Tibetan refugees, who were forced to sell their material heirlooms to survive and sustain themselves. The exodus of refugees from Tibet in 1959 has only added further symbolic capital to Tibetan material culture.²⁴ Despite the mainstreaming of debates around decolonizing museums and restitution of looted heritage, the case of Tibet in museums has remained conspicuously absent from both postcolonial and decolonial discourse.²⁵ Tibetans remain completely marginalized within such museum agendas and discussions, giving rise to a paradox that while objects from Tibet are much desired and welcomed in museums, Tibetan people are not.²⁶ Thus, the fractures in the geopolitical and cultural identity of the Tibetan people are further amplified as they endure the loss not only of their land but also of their material heritage. 

Uncovering the “Debt of Truth” in Tibetan Collections

Among the vast Tibetan collections dispersed across museums and private collections in the United Kingdom lie the muted and suppressed histories of violence and plunder that took place during the Younghusband invasion of Tibet, often embedded in the object’s very materiality. This was particularly evidenced by a gau pierced by a bullet and now held in the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery in Gloucestershire, which Harris argues was collected as a battle trophy by the British army.²⁷ Another gau riddled with a bullet hole (fig. 4) was discovered in the collection of the National Museums Scotland.²⁸ The late historian of Tibetan art John Clarke highlights that for a gau to be effective, it must be in contact with the body.²⁹ For this reason, although we do not have Tibetan bodies to examine to uncover the violence that took place during Younghusband’s military campaign in Tibet, the gau becomes a proxy for Tibetan bodies and lives in material form. During my collections research at various museums in the United Kingdom, I have encountered a vast number of gau and even if only a minority of them were removed from the bodies of dead Tibetans, this still potentially represents hundreds of lost Tibetan lives (fig. 5).

This loss of life can be even more “explicitly” evidenced through Tibetan objects I encountered during my doctoral fieldwork that have spots of what could be blood. I observed such spots on two objects, both with a direct Younghusband provenance—a gau in the World Cultures collection of the National Museums Liverpool and a wicker shield from the British Museum.³⁰ The gau (fig. 6) houses a tsa-tsa (clay tablet) of Mahakala and a folded kha-btags (white silk scarf). The handwritten label reads, “Charm against bullet—taken from the body of a dead Tibetan at Dongste monastery by Major.”³¹ The label refers to a Geluk monastery at Drongtse (‘brong-rtse), near Gyantse, that was founded in 1442. On examining this gau, I observed a sizeable, red spot on the object’s textile amulet (srung-nga) component. I thought this stain was possibly blood due to the acquisition circumstances (it was taken from a dead Tibetan’s body) and the knowledge of how the amulet is traditionally worn across the body. I immediately requested testing, and the in-house investigation was conducted by senior organics conservator Tracey Seddon. Due to the museum’s hesitance to authorize destructive sampling, we discussed and explored alternative, nondestructive analytical procedures. However, such methods were inconclusive.³² Joanne Dyer and Diego Tamburini from the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum also conducted noninvasive testing on the shield, with FORS (Fiber Optic Reflectance spectroscopy) as the only available in-house option (fig. 7). Preliminary tests on both objects were unable to conclusively scientifically verify the presence of blood, and multiple experts, including the team at the British Museum, concluded that the only viable route would be to conduct proteomics analysis (a cellular examination of proteins), which would require destructive sampling.³³

Even with the small sample size of the collections review during my doctoral research, I uncovered two objects of potential significance at the British Museum whose origins were inscribed on them—a kapala (fig. 8) and a helmet (fig. 9).³⁴  Both had been “collected” by Major H. A. Iggulden, a member of the Younghusband Mission. Upon examination, I observed that “Palkhor Chode” had been inscribed on the base of the kapala. This refers to Pelkhor Chode, an important monastic complex in Gyantse (located in the historical Tsang province of Tibet), which was attacked and occupied by the British in 1904.³⁵ I argue that this kapala was inscribed by the field “collector” to mark the origins of this battle trophy collected from Gyantse. The helmet revealed a Tibetan inscription rgyal-tse (Gyantse), which is accompanied by what appears to be the Tibetan numeral seven (༧). I believe that these objects were removed and taken from the Pelkhor Chode monastery (or Gyantse dzong) by Major Iggulden, but were transcribed by two different types of agents: Indigenous (Tibetan) and colonial (British). However, it is noteworthy that the museum recorded neither of these easily legible inscriptions, particularly considering they reveal direct provenance. These gaps in the museum database are not highlighted to criticize the specific institutions, as this is symptomatic of the broader sector, but rather to show how such gaps could become focal points for museums to coproduce knowledge with living members of the Tibetan community, rather than re-amplifying what was said or done by British officers. 

Considering the limitations in archival information (notably on early Tibetan collections), and more importantly, due to suppressed and silenced histories in the colonial archive, new modes of scientific inquiry on Tibetan objects could be deployed to uncover “truths” in the collection. Such inquiries can make the hidden violence of Tibetan objects explicit, which historian Achille Mbembe calls a “debt of truth” that museums should address.³⁶ This case study also highlights the inherent conflict between institutional guidelines that seek to preserve the physical integrity of objects and the necessity of conducting tests that generally require destructive sampling.³⁷ Reflecting on the histories of the museumification of Tibet’s material heritage, venerated Tibetan sacred images and objects (such as gau) have been emptied of their sacral contents (gzungs-gzhug) in the name of scientific inquiry and thangka paintings have been radically altered with their textile borders (gong-gsham) removed to elevate them as “fine art.”³⁸ Considering sacred Tibetan objects have been subjected to such forms of museal violence across different institutions, museums must reconsider and prioritize such modes of inquiry that would uncover the colonial violence that caused the object to be in the museum’s collection in the first place. 

Reanimating Tibet in the Museum

While Tibetans have had limited agency in how much of Tibet’s portable heritage was deposited in museums across the world through “doubly colonial” extractive regimes, it can be argued that the objects have only survived significant periods of destruction due to their “museumization.” However, as is apparent, there are substantial gaps in the knowledge and provenance around/of Tibetan collections across institutions. To address these gaps and offer an antidote to the dislocation and destruction of Tibetan cultural heritage, museums must engage with Tibetans and reconnect these objects to the community (fig. 10).³⁹ To begin addressing the colonial entanglement, these Tibetan collections could serve as focal points for long-term and sustainable engagement between museums and Tibetans. Besides tackling issues surrounding the lack of Tibetan agency and the acute absence of Tibetan voice(s) in museums, this could give rise to innovative approaches to creating new knowledge and working with Tibetan collections. However, Tibet’s complex and contested nature raises a foundational question: Who can represent Tibetan interests in museums and in the related “authorized heritage discourse”?⁴⁰

While working with communities has become increasingly mainstream across the museum and heritage sector in the United Kingdom (and beyond), prevailing practices and discourse primarily focus on the outputs of community engagement or collaboration. As noted by some scholars, there is a need to move beyond the prevalent “black box” approach to community engagement and pivot the focus from the products of consultation or collaboration to its underlying process and methodologies.⁴¹As museums become increasingly social spaces and undertake more extensive consultation and collaboration initiatives, divergent actors and groups will inevitably emerge to compete for the role of representing a “community of origin.” Hence, the museum will have to mediate between these competing groups and subsets of communities. Considering the cultural and geopolitical implications and shifting goalposts in ethics, community-oriented museum practices must be grounded in sustained research, methodology, and ethical and critical precision, particularly when the ownership of material heritage is contested and its provenance is complex. My work remains grounded in a simple idea—let’s not propose or conceive of solutions to problems we don’t fully understand, especially if the decisions are irreversible and permanent, such as restitution. Museums (and academics) could instead try to create conditions or spaces that allow communities to undertake “slow agentive decision-making” in choices concerning the future of their heritage accessioned in Western museums, which will have long-lasting impact and significance.⁴² In such slow, agentive processes, it can become more apparent how sub-state actors such as Indigenous/historically marginalized communities could assert agency in authorized heritage discourse currently dominated by (direct and indirect) state actors. It’s evident that the complex and contested case of Tibet in museums requires a nuanced research-led approach. Perhaps this is a true litmus test for the decolonial agendas of the museum and heritage sector?

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Before Nightfall, a 1981–82 triptych by Nilima Sheikh, imagines a scene unfolding at twilight on the campus of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda, a city in the Indian state of Gujarat (fig. 1).¹ The image conjures an otherworldly landscape, with the local flora and fauna painted as swirling forms and sweeping swaths of color. Nestled on the left is the Residency Bungalow, the faculty housing that served as Sheikh’s home for nearly two decades. The open structure of the house reflects the familial nature of the community in Baroda. Artists frequently dropped by each other’s homes simply to chat, conversations in the studio often continued over the dinner table, and students addressed their teachers as bhai or ben (“brother” or “sister” in the local language, Gujarati). 

Sheikh is one of several Baroda artists whose work has been categorized in art historical scholarship as “narrative-figuration,” a term first associated with the Baroda school in the early 1980s.² This designation refers to a distinct mode of figuration adopted by artists like Bhupen Khakhar, Gulammohammed Sheikh, and Vivan Sundaram, who created paintings grounded in sociopolitical critique, images of everyday life, and narratives embedded in local settings (figs. 2, 3). However, this formalist grouping excludes their contemporaries, artists such as Nasreen Mohamedi and Jeram Patel, who were working at the same time but in a decisively abstract idiom. It also reflects a tendency in the art historical discipline to classify artists by singular stylistic affinities. Against this, I challenge the idea that a stylistic label can easily be applied to the Baroda artists and argue that writing a narrative of this school demands a closer look at the collaborations, dialogues, and influences across generations of artists who taught, worked, and lived alongside each other.

During my interviews with artists from Baroda, I expected them to describe their classroom pedagogy or to discuss the development of their visual language. Instead, our conversations turned to anecdotes about gatherings in their homes, jokes about cooking or dancing together, and memories of the “homey” atmosphere on campus. Their words, when read alongside candid archival photographs, portraits of them and their friends, and artworks depicting their shared residential spaces, paint an image of the home as an alternative site of artistic and pedagogical practices, one that was as central to their experience as the classroom and studio.³ By examining these visualizations of social spaces and the dialogues taking place within them, I recontextualize their artistic practices through a lens of community and camaraderie. I propose that this framework has implications beyond a study of the Faculty of Fine Arts in that it allows us to understand postcolonial modernity more broadly as having developed through collective efforts and informal networks of exchange rather than through the stylistic innovations of individual artists.

The Faculty of Fine Arts, founded in 1950, was the first art school established in an independent India. Over the years, the Faculty incubated generations of Indian modernists, many of whom first trained as students and later returned to teach in the same departments in which they themselves had studied. Echoing the artists’ descriptions of a “homey” campus, the college began out of a single residential bungalow called Pushpa Baug (fig. 4). This house provided a bright and open space for the art school, with a veranda and balcony on the first floor, rooms that were used for lecture halls and studio spaces, and a guesthouse that was converted into a pottery studio. In the span of a few years, the campus grew around this central space to include half a dozen buildings housing multiple departments, including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. 

As a witness to these early years, ceramist Ira Chaudhuri described an extemporaneous development of the institution, when both teachers and the administration were navigating what was, at the time, uncharted territory in the newly independent nation-state. Practicing artists were invited from across the country to set up individual departments within the school. As new positions continued to be filled and young families began moving to Baroda, it became increasingly difficult to find accommodation. It was suggested that apartments in one building be combined, so that new faculty members and their families could live together in a common residence. This ad hoc development of the school resulted in an atmosphere where artists like Ira and her husband, sculptor Sankho Chaudhuri, became local guardians for many young students arriving in Baroda, and their houses, gathering places for the growing community. Students recall that they could drop by their teachers’ homes and studios anytime, a precedent likely set by the Chaudhuris. Ira ben explained this with nonchalance, “We just never closed the front door [of our house]. It was always open. People came in and out.”⁴ Despite the Chaudhuris’ meager salaries during these early years and their frequent difficulties in making ends meet, they made their home a refuge for any student seeking a meal, a loan, or a place to stay.

The shared space of community that was inevitably created in these artists’ homes can best be described as an adda, a term translated by linguist Sunitikumar Chattopadhyay as a “place for careless talk with boon companions.”⁵ Conversations in an adda were often long, meandering, and informal. The same could be said of the conversations taking place in Baroda. Nilima Sheikh describes the gatherings at her friends’ homes as fundamental to her time at the school. Yet, when I inquired whether these discussions included pedagogical discourse or feedback on her work, she was quick to say that her peers never taught her anything in that sense. Instead, these get-togethers included “random discussions. Hanging around the college canteen. Staying late in the studio to chitchat.”⁶ These informal hangouts both within and outside of the institutional spaces allowed for a fluid or unconscious mode of pedagogical instruction and a sharing of ideas beyond the constraints of the classroom or studio. 

The recruiting of teachers from schools around the country resulted in a confluence of diverse pedagogical lineages in Baroda. Sankho Chaudhuri and K. G. Subramanyan, for example, introduced ideas and methods from their alma mater Santiniketan, a colonial-era school founded in 1901 by the writer and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. Santiniketan was modelled after the tapovans, or forest hermitage schools of India, where teachers and students lived together as a community. Tagore’s founding vision emphasized a linking of art and the environment, villages, and folk traditions that surrounded them, and he insisted that artists move out of their studios and into public spaces. Responding directly to the existing models of art education, the Santiniketan faculty integrated community-based practices into their teaching as an ideological and anticolonial tool against the rigid pedagogy of the art schools established by the British government.⁷

In contrast, the Faculty was established in the decades immediately following independence and developed its collective practices as a specifically postcolonial proposition, one fostered by artists seeking like-minded collaborators and, for many, a community different than those they came from. Since its early years, the Faculty had attracted students from both neighboring rural regions in Gujarat and urban metropolises across India. As a result of this heterogeneity, artists moving to Baroda experienced freedoms unlike any in their hometowns. Bhupen Khakhar, for example, noted that he came to Baroda because it would have been impossible for him to stay in Bombay and paint: “My family members would not allow me. . . . At the back of my mind, it also must be my gay attitude.”⁸ Similarly, as a young girl arriving from Delhi, Nilima Sheikh recalls being surprised that she was allowed to stay out and work in the studios until late into the night.⁹ Gulammohammed Sheikh, who had moved from a smaller town in Gujarat, was made to reckon with an unfamiliar kind of cosmopolitanism: “It was a new experience for me altogether. To meet so many people in the liberal environment that the university provided—it was almost like an extended family.”¹⁰ The addas, which enabled artists to retreat into a cosmopolitan bubble on campus in an otherwise provincial town, thereby came to symbolize a mode of sociality that was unique to Baroda’s local context.¹¹ At the same time, as my interviews with the artists revealed, it also led to moments of exclusion, marginality, and difference, despite the close-knit community. I thus argue that this period was entrenched in contradictions and simultaneities—a reflection of the complicated postcolonial climate in which the school emerged.

At the crux of this narrative is also the seemingly anomalous location of Baroda, a small town removed from urban centers such as Bombay or Delhi, which had previously been the primary loci of modernist movements and art schools in India. In many ways, it was this provincial location that encouraged the sense of camaraderie and interdependence among peers. The lack of a commercial gallery system and established collectors or patrons of art eliminated a sense of competition among friends or a desire to cater to the art market. With limited opportunities to exhibit works in Baroda, students would travel together to Bombay—carrying rolled-up canvases on the train, collectively renting out gallery spaces, and installing their works there themselves. Much like the ad hoc trajectory of the institution, the artists’ entry into the art market relied on self-driven labor and collaboration among peers.  

In my conversations with art critic Geeta Kapur, she was particular about using the word “bohemianism” to describe the atmosphere in Baroda from the 1960s onward.¹² Kapur’s presence in Baroda—as one of the first critics to write about its practices—was influential. As the partner of the artist Vivan Sundaram and a close friend of several other Baroda artists, she was uniquely positioned as a witness to both their artistic trajectories and their lived experiences. Reflecting upon her memories from the time, she spoke to me of the kinds of informal and deliberately sparse conditions in which they existed. Over the years, several artists came to inhabit the same residences, often due to the lack of alternative housing, to financial hardship, or through the provision of university accommodations. Artists rarely worked in their home-studios alone and, in fact, would leave their doors open so that friends could come and go as they wished. 

Kapur’s description poetically echoes the title of Sundaram’s 1981 painting People Come and Go, which is set in Paramanand, the bungalow that the artist Bhupen Khakhar built for himself in the middle-class Baroda neighborhood of Chikuwadi (fig. 5). Khakar named the house after his father and the Sanskrit word for “supreme happiness,” foreshadowing the revelry that he hosted there in the years to come. While the house had a separate studio, Khakhar preferred to work in the room pictured above, where he could be surrounded by friends, who dropped in at all hours and engaged him in conversation while he painted. Sundaram hints at Paramanand being a place where the community convened by depicting a welcome mat strategically placed at the bottom of the stairs and showing the door to the house left ajar. Khakhar appears to be in the middle of his painting process, examining a canvas propped up against a wall. British painter Howard Hodgkin, a close friend of the Baroda artists, is shown seated behind him at leisure, with his arms outstretched and his legs casually crossed. The otherwise tranquil setting is interrupted by “glitches” in the composition—a spectral figure of Vallabhai, Khakhar’s lover at the time, floats next to him; Khakhar’s body is painted in translucent hues as if fading into the background; and the picture planes intersect one another, like where a wall panel overlaps Hodgkin’s arm. These idiosyncrasies, combined with the dreamlike pointillist light that floods the room, indicate that Sundaram was not just painting from memory but rather creating a vision of memory—a reminiscence of camaraderie and intimate friendships.

I began my research on Baroda with the awareness that the crux of my argument relied on something intangible—unrecorded conversations, veiled social relations, and ordinary moments of companionship. And although some of this narrative could be gleaned from archival materials and conversations with artists, this research would likely have remained within the realm of the speculative were it not visualized through Jyoti Bhatt’s collection of nearly 1,500 photographs of the campus and the community taken between 1956 and 1999. Much like the formation of the community in Baroda, the development of Bhatt’s photographic practice was by happenstance. Since many students were not able to afford to have their work professionally photographed, Bhatt offered to shoot it for a small sum—in essence, for the price of the necessary film—which allowed him to learn new techniques at little cost. Studying the photographs in his archive chronologically, however, reveals a branching out of his subject matter from documentation of artworks to portraits of friends and contemporaries. Otherwise unassuming photographs of artists in their studios or posing with their work are filled with glimpses of conviviality, playfulness, and collaboration. 

In one photograph from 1970, three students are seated on top of a canvas laid out on the floor, simultaneously drawing different sections of a collaborative artwork (fig. 6). In another, from 1975, more than a dozen students are spread out on a porch, sharing a meal from an array of lunch boxes set between them (fig. 7). In a third, three students sit huddled together, poring over a single book (fig. 8). Lastly, a group shot from 1974 sums up friendships in the studio; amid art supplies, canvases, and frames, we see students holding hands, leaning on one another, and mid-laughter as if caught sharing a joke (fig. 9). 

As a witness to and participant in the formation of this community, Bhatt had untethered access to these candid moments, allowing him to capture the complex undertows of friendship and camaraderie on campus. And yet, despite my place as an outsider to this community, artists spoke to me with the same sense of kinship and familiarity that I describe here. My interviews, which primarily took place in their homes, were replete with nostalgic stories, complicated reflections on the past, and above all, an openness to sharing. Like Jyoti bhai said in response to my request to meet: “ઘર ખુલ્લું છે. ગમે ત્યારેઆવો (The doors of my house are always open. Come anytime you like).”

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