This exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre unravels the hidden dynamics between the state and the citizen

The ongoing exhibition, titled The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998, at the Barbican Centre in London, ends with four images of the late artist Rummana Hussain. Photographed as part of her final performance, the stills provocatively hark back to the poignant questions that lie at the heart of her swansong, Is it what you think? (1998): “Have you defined her? Is she the other? Do you pity her? Is that your construct? Is it a predicament?” Hussain’s words uttered as a rebuke to the patriarchy and majoritarianism plaguing Indian society in the ’90s, are perhaps the closest one can come to while describing this equal-parts gargantuan and historic exhibition of 150 works of multi-media art spanning a little more than two decades of contemporary Indian history. Through the prism of art, it urges us to ask questions about the ideas of state and its complex, ever-evolving relationship with the citizen. By the end of it, one wonders what truly is the monolith we call India, and to whom does it truly belong?

Curated by Shanay Jhaveri, the Barbican’s first South -Asian Head of Visual Arts, the exhibition is the world’s maiden curatorial exploration of Indian artwork produced between 1975 and 1998- a time of significant cultural and political change for the country. Organised in collaboration with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, the exhibition features artworks by close to 30 artists. Speaking about the experience of curating an exhibition of this stature, Jhaveri says, “I was thrilled to bring some of these works out of private and public collections, to create this chorus where they reverberate and be in dialogue with one another.” Qamoos Bukhari, a research associate for the exhibition, also chimes in, “This exhibition was an opportune moment to bring together all these artists. These artworks have been displayed before, but not in the specific context of Shanay’s curatorial vision, and that was very exciting.”

The exhibition features images of tender intimacy by Pablo Bartholomew and Sunil Gupta, monochrome posters of angry, punk politicism by Navtoj Altaf, expansive canvases by Bhupen Khakhar and Gieve Patel, early video works by Nalini Malani, and immersive installation pieces by the likes of Nilima Sheikh. These varied works unfold over the space of two floors of the Barbican Gallery, like a soulfully orchestrated hymn to the upheavals of a turbulent era in contemporary Indian history—with an array of late-20th century artists as its ardent choristers. Curated along four primary thematic axes—rapid urbanisation, indigenous culture preservation, outbreak of communal violence, and queer desires—the exhibition stands bookended by two major events: the declaration of Emergency by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998 by then Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee.

The first incident is illustrated through Gulammohammed Sheikh’s provocative Speechless City. Painted in 1975, it captures a striking response to the suspension of civil liberties and media censorship during the Emergency. With a forbidding orange glow pervading the canvas, the painting features a desolate town—bereft of any human habitation—with foraging cattle and wild dogs, and flocks of birds as the only signs of life. A shiver descends one’s spine when confronted with the stark desolation and the arresting colour palette of Sheikh’s vision.

On the other hand, Nalini Malani’s Remembering Toba Tek Singh (1999) offers a multi-media response to India’s first underground nuclear tests in 1998. Single-cell animation videos show two identical women (representing India and Pakistan) failing to fold a sari owing to their preoccupation with the horror of nuclear weapon detonation. These two monochromatic videos form a chilling triptych with a central projection comprising archival footage from the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombings, the Partition, and the Pokhran tests themselves—echoing the traumatic horrors of displacement that Sadat Hassan Manto chronicled in his 1955 short story Toba Tek Singh.

Amid these stark, angry, desolate, and often grievous works of art, Jhaveri and his team punctuate the exhibition with moments of unexpected tenderness. Gieve Patel’s painting, Two Men with Hand Cart (1979), displays two working-class men, stealing a moment of solace under the burgeoning weight of a metropolitan Bombay. The canvas, awash with the dreamy pink of a sunset sky, hints at these stolen moments of individual intimacy that one must be clung to in times of duress.

This shade of pink, with its plural possibilities, beautifully bleeds into the 120-page long guidebook that viewers are offered at the entrance of the gallery. Amberi Li, the curatorial assistant on this exhibition, shares, “We took the pink from that painting, and amped it up because we wanted it to pop against the exhibition architecture. The pink encapsulates one of the things that we want people to take away from the art in this show—the thrilling possibility of life and its ambiguities.”

Originally a resident of Mumbai, Jhaveri was the associate curator of International Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NewYork before joining the Barbican last year.“Both these roles have given me the opportunity to think about Indian or South Asian art history and how it can be reframed in the context of a global conversation,” says Jhaveri. His first major exhibition at the Barbican, the period for the same was a no-brainer for Jhaveri. “Social justice, violence against women, minority rights, affirmative action are some of the concerns these artists were navigating at that time. These issues are prevalent today, not just in India but across the world and I thought that for audiences there would be a resonance to see how these artists have negotiated and worked around these ongoing problems,” he reflects.

Lead Image: Barbara Kennedy/ Gieve Patel courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Gulammohammed and Vadehira Art Gallery (Two Men with Hand Cart  (1979) by Gieve Patel and Gulammohammed Sheikh's Speechless City (1975)).

Inside image: Installation view worldwide video festival, Amsterdam, 1998 Nalini Malani

This piece originally appeared in Harper's Bazaar India, December 2024, print edition.

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