In its second edition Beyond Tradition | Two: Continuity and Change in Indian Traditional Art presents twelve artists working across India’s diverse living traditions, highlighting the dynamic and evolving nature of practices often seen as static or unchanging. Organised by Indian Arts Collective, the exhibition situates these practices within contemporary artistic and cultural discourse.
Historically embedded within localised, community-based systems of knowledge and production, indigenous art practices have long been understood through frameworks of continuity and preservation. This exhibition reconsiders such perspectives by examining how artists actively negotiate transformation. While drawing on inherited visual vocabularies, they respond to shifting socio-economic conditions, new audiences, and expanded institutional contexts, reinterpreting materials, iconography, scale, and narrative strategies. In doing so, tradition emerges not as fixed, but as adaptive and responsive.
Structured around three thematic frameworks – narrative practices, sacred traditions, and tribal art – the exhibition reflects the diversity and internal complexity of these forms. Participating artists include Anwar Chitrakar (Kalighat), Gitanjali Das (Orissa Pattachitra), Kalyan Joshi (Phad), Ladobai (Bhil), Mahesh Vishnoi (Pichwai), Mohan Verma (Sanjjhi), Sanjay Chitara (Mata ni Pachedi), Ramesh Hengadi (Warli), Shailesh Pandit (Studio Pottery), Padmashri S. Shakir Ali (Miniature), Suresh Waghmare (Gadhwakam), and Venkat Ram Singh Shyam (Gond). Their works extend storytelling traditions, engage with ritual and devotion, and present their relationships to ecology, community, and ancestry.
The artists are recognised practitioners within their respective lineages, many sustained across generations. Their work reflects deep engagement with material, technique, and cultural memory, while addressing present-day concerns. Through exhibitions, educational programmes, and collaborative initiatives, Indian Arts Collective places artists at the centre of its work, encouraging direct engagement between artists and audiences.
By challenging binaries between traditional and contemporary, rural and urban, and indigenous and global, Beyond Tradition | Two positions these practices as active sites of contemporary artistic production, inviting a reconsideration of how Indian art histories are constructed.