Korwa Drawings: Adivasi Expression at the Edge of Language

Source The Wire by Impart
The Pahadi (Hill) Korwa are a distinct sub-group of the Korwa of central and northeastern India, who belong to the Munda ethnic group; they are a designated Scheduled Tribe, and further classed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG). Most live in the Vindhyadri mountain range that cuts across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, in the Raigarh and Surguja districts respectively. Historically they were known to be skilled hunters and also foraged and practised shifting cultivation. In modern India, the livelihood of many Pahadi Korwa depends variously on small-scale settled agriculture and livestock rearing, and the foraging and sale of produce and firewood from forests, while others are landless labourers often subject to exploitation and marginalisation. In 1983 Swaminathan, then the director of Bharat Bhavan, organised a visit to the Pahadi Korwa in Surguja and Raigarh as part of the institution’s drive to document the cultural production of Adivasi artists in the region and collect artworks for its museum Roopankar. The initial team of field researchers he sent — selected art students from government colleges who had been oriented and trained — noted the Korwa’s interest in their notebooks, pens and crayons, and their keenness to use the materials. When Swaminathan arrived later with fellow artists Jyoti Bhatt and Anil Kumar, he began making sketches of the community leader and his wife with pen on paper, as an attempt to establish some form of communication given his lack of knowledge of the Korwa language. On his prompting, several of the villagers then produced drawings over a period of days. This was done as a community activity, though they worked individually on large sheets of paper with the pens, pencils, markers, brushes they were provided. They are seen in photographs drawing with the paper laid flat on the ground. Later the same year, Swaminathan wrote about the experience and published the drawings in his book The Magical Script. The drawings were exhibited at Bharat Bhavan in 1985. In 1996, Jamme came across the drawings there, and later travelled to the Pahadi Korwa villages, accompanied by a support team including a translator, to collect more drawings in a similar exercise. These, along with the drawings made in 1983, form the complete extant collection of Korwa drawings today.
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‘Shocking? It’s only what you see in ancient temples’: painter T Venkanna on his joyous carnivals of copulation

Source The Guardian by Cleo Roberts-Komiredd
TVenkanna’s paintings land like a sucker-punch. At the centre of his first institutional solo show at London’s Studio Voltaire is an overbearing altarpiece, modified by two squat side panels to take the overall shape of a juvenile dick drawing. Perched at the bottom, on either side, are Adam and Eve. Their backs are turned as they look out on an orgasmic thicket of desire. A female figure is pleasured by another’s nose, someone copulates with the hindquarters of an animal and others fondle in a kaleidoscopic blur of colours and styles that make Hieronymus Bosch look restrained. But carnal enjoyment is merely the footnote. “It is a way to consider many things, including the myth of religions,” says Venkanna. Scattered within this longing landscape are stony figures redolent of India’s pantheon of gods and goddesses. Women worship a topiary lingam – the aniconic depiction of Shiva – and a man caresses a statuesque woman’s breast (while drinking from her vagina). Graphic? “That is what you see in ancient temples,” says Venkanna. “People touch the breasts of sculptures so that over time they become very smooth and shiny.”
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Bijoy Jain And Studio Mumbai: The Indian Architect Redefining Sustainable Luxury Design

Source Outlook by Aaron Jacob
uxury has become a strange thing. Once upon a time it meant hand-carved stone, timber shaped by skilled craftsmen and homes built to survive centuries. Today, it often means touchscreen panels controlling automated curtains, buildings wrapped entirely in glass and enough electronic systems to launch a small satellite into orbit. The result? Structures that require enormous amounts of energy merely to remain comfortable. Buildings that seal themselves off from nature while claiming to celebrate it. Homes that somehow feel less human despite being packed with more technology than ever before. And then there is Bijoy Jain. While much of contemporary architecture is obsessed with speed, scale and spectacle, Jain has spent decades pursuing something far more radical: slowness. Not the fashionable sort of slowness discussed in design conferences, but genuine architectural patience. Buildings that breathe naturally. Spaces that age gracefully. Structures designed not to dominate their environment but to belong to it.
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India’s Kiran Nadar Museum to stage major South Asian art exhibition at Christie’s London this summer.

Source Artsy by Katie White
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) will present a major exhibition from its collection at Christie’s London this summer, marking the first time the auction house’s annual exhibition series has been dedicated to a South Asian institution. Titled “The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection,” the exhibition will run from July 16th through August 21st at Christie’s King Street headquarters. Organized in collaboration with the auction house, the exhibition will feature works from the New Delhi–based museum’s collection spanning modern and contemporary art, alongside folk and Indigenous artistic traditions from South Asia. Works by artists including M.F. Husain, Sayed Haider Raza, F.N. Souza, and Jangarh Singh Shyam will be featured.
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Nalini Malani’s Venice Biennale 2026 exhibition confronts violence, myth, and motherhood

Source Hapers Bazaar by Radhika Iyengar
Malani’s Venice installation comes to life at the Magazzini del Sale, a 15th century salt warehouse complex belonging to the Renaissance. With its nine large arched doorways, discoloured terracotta bricks and a wooden trussed roof, Magazzini del Sale is brimming with character. This warehouse of yore overlooks the historical waters of the Giudecca Canal that once served as a passageway for boats carrying salt. Malani, who is known to carefully consider the architectural anatomy of the sites where she exhibits, will project the animations onto Magazzini del Sale’s walls. “The history of the site is very important to me because I work with the space, not just a white cube,” she says, noting that she visited Magazzini twice last year for recce and rehearsals. In the course of our conversation, she reveals herself to be an avid reader of Greek mythology, sharing snippets from tragedy, and occasionally, offering nuggets of trivia: for instance, the word ‘salary’ comes from the word ‘salt’, she informs, once a precious monetary commodity. In the universe Malani creates, complex myths and their narratives no longer remain distant or opaque—they are distilled through a lens to gauge what is happening now.
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How Dayanita Singh Organized a Major Show in Venice

Source Hyperallergic by Hrag Vartanian
This show continues that career-spanning goal. After giving herself the challenge of achieving all this without major corporate or commercial gallery funding — though she was able to get funding for shipping from her India-based institutional partner — Singh bartered and negotiated her way into Italian archives from Naples to Venice. She found individuals along the way that she calls patrons who helped support her passion for photography’s new frontiers, unmoored from the anchors of deep pockets that hinder her imagination. “It was an experiment to see if it was possible to really work with the friendship economy and make something outside the very commerce-driven biennale time,” Singh told me during our video interview last week, now online. “We couldn’t afford PR, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to come, and that’s fine too. Even if nobody comes, I did it. But people are coming.”
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Kader Attia to Curate the 2027 Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Source Art Asia Pacific by Yuqian Fan
The Kochi Biennale Foundation has named Algerian French artist, curator, and scholar Kader Attia as curator of the seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which is scheduled to open in 2027. Born in Dugny in 1970 and based between Berlin and Paris, Attia examines the ongoing ramifications of colonialism through installations, films, sculptures, and archival research, often articulated through his long-term engagement with the concept of “Repair.” He is a professor of time-based media at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and has been recognized with the Marcel Duchamp Prize in Paris (2016), the Joan Miró Prize in Barcelona, and the Yanghyun Prize in Seoul (both 2017). In 2022, he curated the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. In a statement, Attia said he looks forward to drawing on Kochi’s layered cultural histories to frame both art and dreaming as forms of “repair,” adding that both the biennial and Kerala offer “the space-time to reclaim our sovereignty over our dreams.”
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A collector’s guide to Ganesh Pyne

Source Christie's
As a teenager, Pyne discovered the paintings of the Bengal School, established in the late 19th century by Sunayani Devi and Abanindranath Tagore. This nationalist modern art movement promoted a romantic, symbolist style based on Indian mythology, using ink wash and tempera. ‘You can see their influence in his early paintings of the 1950s,’ says Avari, ‘but very quickly Pyne starts to move on. The works become more existential in theme, reflecting the post-colonial crisis of identity India was experiencing at the time.’ Pyne’s paintings are metaphysical and suffused with a primeval darkness. ‘There’s a “lost world” quality to them that is timeless,’ says Avari. Ganesh Pyne was once described by the journalist and film-maker Pritish Nandy as a man who ‘radiated a mysterious quality’. He was an intensely private artist who rarely gave interviews, which meant clues to his personality were often sought for in his paintings, charged with the supernatural. ‘He raises the ghosts of the past,’ said the actor Barun Chanda in the documentary A Painter of Eloquent Silence.
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