A Quick Look at The Art Exhibitions Doing the Rounds this Season

Prakriti - A Quiet Continuum and Living Lineages at Kalakriti Art Gallery
In Hyderabad, Kalakriti Art Gallery brings together two parallel exhibitions, Prakriti - A Quiet Continuum and Living Lineages, looking at nature and tradition from different perspectives. The exhibition focuses on how artists engage with nature, not just as landscape but as something more internal. The works move between observation and reflection. Roy K John paints dense vegetation and cultivated land that suggest both abundance and fragility. Lal Bahadur Singh uses familiar animals like cows and parrots to point to the way urban life continues to reshape rural spaces.

For K. Sudheesh, the starting point is more personal. His works come from a close engagement with a lake near his home, where reflections of trees blur the line between what is seen and what is felt. Sumanto Chowdhury, on the other hand, builds quieter landscapes influenced by miniature painting and architectural forms, often without human presence.

Running alongside this, Living Lineages looks at practices rooted in folk and indigenous traditions. Here, the focus shifts to continuity. Artists like Bhuri Bai, Balu Jivya Mashe, and Saroj Venkat Shyam and Venkat Raman Shyam work with forms and patterns that have been passed down across generations. There is a strong sense of repetition and rhythm here. Warli figures built from simple shapes, Bhil works filled with dots and colour, and Gond paintings that move through lines and patterns all carry stories that continue to evolve rather than remain fixed.

Seen together, the two exhibitions do not try to compare contemporary and traditional practices directly. Instead, they sit alongside each other, allowing you to move between different ways of making and seeing.