Canvas of defiance

“Art emerges from personal, spiritual and aesthetic inspection — not just political allegiance. It dares, it questions and it reveals,” says Wendy Amanda Coutinho, curator of ‘Intertwined: Revisitation of the Indian Art Narrative’, which is currently on view at Progressive Art Gallery in Dubai. And at this exhibition, protest takes many forms.

This show brings together a stupendous range of artists whose works continue to shape conversations about identity, resistance, and legacy. From the pioneering Progressive Artists’ Group, including MF Husain, FN Souza, SH Raza, KH Ara, HA Gade, and SK Bakre, to modern visionaries like Tyeb Mehta, Bhupen Khakhar, Jehangir Sabavala, and VS Gaitonde, the exhibition highlights how these artists resisted not just colonial hangovers, but also the confinement of ideologies, markets, and expectations. Their protest was often formal rather than political, as seen in Raza’s meditative abstraction, Souza’s provocative figuration, or Gaitonde’s Zen-infused minimalism.

Alongside these modern masters, the exhibition also presents powerful feminist and folk-rooted counter-narratives by artists such as Anjolie Ela Menon, B Prabha, Madhvi Parekh, and Arpita Singh — women who dared to tell stories often ignored by the dominant discourse.

The inclusion of visionaries like Jamini Roy, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, Shyamal Dutta Ray, and KG Subramanyan further expands the conversation, showing how protest in Indian art was rarely linear — it was layered, introspective, mystical, and at times, heartbreakingly personal.

Says Coutinho: “To label art as strictly political is to hold its expansive nature captive; one operates within a set framework, while the other resists and challenges systems and unidimensional ideologies. This exhibition is not about loud declarations, but about the layered acts of defiance — intimate, philosophical, formal — that shaped the trajectory of modern Indian art.”

Harshvardhan Singh, director of Progressive Art Gallery, calls the exhibition a celebration of artists who didn’t just paint pictures, but carved paths. “Their works, drawn from across decades and ideologies, converge here to speak a common truth — art is, and always has been, a powerful agent of change.”

On till May 31

Arts