Indian artists communicate with the world through their art as never before. The diversity in their creative universes is absolutely spectacular. If some of them use Indian symbols to reveal a whole lot other meanings, others are truly abstract and some of them are powerfully influenced by the Indian culture and the surroundings of their hometown.
Bharti Kher
This artist is well known for the central motive that she uses in all her artistic pieces: the bindi. Millions of Indians apply today the red bindi on their foreheads every day for different occasions and stages in life, especially marriage. Originally, the meaning of the bindi is to symbolize the third eye between the spiritual world and the religious world. Bharti liberates the significance of the bindi into a more spectacular ensemble. But she doesn’t only resume to painting, as she also applies bindi on fiber glass sculptures, often animals. When asked how did she start to realize art the way she does, she said that she started with 10 packages of bindi and then wondered what she can to with 10.000.
Alwar Balasubramaniam
Balasubramaniam has a passion for perfectly combining sculpture, two-dimensional style and artistic installations. In an abstract sense, he manages through his work to make the invisible visible or, as he says, “to capture the “nothingness” between clasped hands”.
Jitish Kallat
This artist has added photographic skills alongside sculpture, painting and installation. He is often influenced by graffiti and street art in general, as his hometown Mumbai is one of his main muses. Jitish’s art perfectly captivates the specific density and energy that characterizes the modern Bombay. As far as sculptures are concerned, he uses cast fiber glass bones to build up certain pieces of art, like this carcass of an auto rickshaw that he saw once burning during a riot.
Dhruvi Acharya
Her passion for comics and street art is revealed throughout her artistic pieces, that usually comment the roles and expectations of the modern women in India. Her statement better explains her art “The roles of being a woman and artist plus a mother and daughter, of living life as a couple with two boys, or life as a couple with two careers …these dualities find their way into my paintings, through allegories and metaphors, images and colors” . In this composition she eliminates the images, leaving the actual text alone to reveal something previously unseen and provocative.
Racqs Media Collective
This is actually a group of three artists that are well known for their multimedia art practice in India, combining photography, video and installation. They frequently explore the processes of globalization and urbanization as they evolve and affect their hometown Delhi. In this installation they invite the viewer to analyze the crime scene looking at evidence exposed on 5 different screens in which the city itself is seen as a suspect.
