METHOD DELHI
ON VIEW UNTIL 21ST SEPTEMBER

There are days when silence feels complicit. This is not one of them.

The Parliament Is Now In Session opens on 14th August, a day preceding Independence Day —not in celebration, but in confrontation. While the nation marks another year of independence, this exhibition looks at the widening gap between freedom as symbol and freedom as lived reality.

Across India today, dissent is punished, identities are policed, and memory is rewritten. Activists vanish into prisons without trial. Villages are erased in the name of development. Queer and caste-oppressed bodies are brutalised, then blamed. Protest sites become crime scenes, and headlines become weapons.

In this atmosphere, art becomes more than expression. It becomes evidence. Interruption. Resistance.

The artists in this exhibition do not speak in one voice. Their practices span regions, languages, and forms—but each carries an urgency that cannot be aestheticised. Some works speak from the frontlines. Others dig quietly beneath the surface. Together, they refuse the convenience of forgetting.

You will encounter the body as archive, the land as witness, the image as indictment. These works reckon with the violence of laws and the failures of language. They ask: Who gets to belong? Who decides what is history, and what is erased? Who gets heard—and who is made invisible?

This is not an invitation to observe. It is a call to pay attention. There is no final statement here. No neat takeaway. No performance of neutrality.

Only a floor that remains open. A session that refuses to end.

The Parliament Is Now In Session

Horror Is Pain, Love and Grief by M Thamshangpha
Handmade Cotton Paper, Oil Crayon and Yarn
66.5" x 99"

Ballot Box by Hari Kishan
Concrete, Sickle Tools and Cast Iron
H 11.5" x W 18.5" x D 12"

"Ballot Box is a satirical work on today’s idea of democracy. It reflects the rigid, closed, and manipulated system driven by hierarchy, class, race, and division.

The sickles — symbols of the working class, farmers, and other labouring communities — show how they become half-submerged in the system, permanently embedded, silently watching the theatre of mockery, and silenced within its structure.

The molten bubble, or eruption, emerging from the surface represents the suppressed anger and grief of these communities — ready to erupt, travelling through the loopholes of the system and the so-called democracy.

The choice of materials also indicates the tension between labour, democracy, and power. The Ballot Box becomes a silent yet explosive object — one that does not collect votes, but rather collects violence, unheard appeals, resistance, and dissent. "

A march against the lie (IA) by Prabhakar Pachpute

Acrylic & Multani Mitti on Canvas, Soil
183" x 121"

Pachpute has been participating and documenting several long marches by farmers from rural India into its cities. This coming together of disenfranchised masses of people who have used their own bodies as a last resort to register their protest, seem to him, as indicators of hope. His experiences and interactions with miners and farmers all over the world, permeates his work.

A march against the lie (IA) pictures a clenched fist rising from a topography of soil, heaped on the ground, a symbol at once of protest and solidarity. As such this work is typical of Pachpute’s practice involving iconography that moves between the personal and the global, from solidarity and collective union to despoiled landscapes and fragmented individuals.

Whispers of Yesterday by Fiza Hussain

Teracotta Brick, Old Cabinet, and Carpet
Cabinet" W 16” x H 65” x D 33.5”
Carpet W 86'' x L 60''

The artwork suggests a contemplation of the unknown aspect of space, suggesting that the true essence both within and beyond, is profound and unfamiliar. Empty, deteriorating objects now echo the joy and sorrow they once held. Each worn-out item and space embody a profound melancholy, akin to a constant heartache. These remnants tell a vivid story of past lives, inviting us to listen to their quiet, sorrowful tales. The spaces, like silent storytellers, embrace the ruins, absorbing the emotions and stories left behind. They become keepers of memories, acknowledging the lives that once animated these spaces. This evocative journey through abandoned places reveals a tangible connection between the inanimate and the vivid memories they hold, creating a poignant tableau of bygone moments

Untitled by Riya Chandwani

Paper Burn on Gateway Sheet, Charcoal, Pencil, Graphite, Gold Leaf
36" x 60" Each, Diptych
(72" x 60" Combined)

As Riya continues her burn works - where paper bears the marks of time, memory, and erasure, she turns to the words spoken at the time of Partition. In this series, Riya inscribes Jinnah’s 11 August 1947 speech onto the surface of his body, and Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech onto his own, each rendered in indigo blue, a colour deeply tied to both pain and resilience in our history.Their faces are covered in gold leaf, a deliberate gesture to both sanctify and obscure. In doing so, the work asks the viewer to look not at the men, but at the promises they made. What was said then? What remains today?These works do not offer answers, but hold space for the question:Are we truly free in this independent nation?The burnt edges, fragile surfaces, and lingering words speak of both hope and haunting - of a past that still smoulders within us.

1/2.1 Million by Khan Shamim Akhtar
Water colour on paper and korai grass embossing
12" x 10"

"1/2.1 Million" reflects the silent suffering of those trapped in conflict and facing starvation. The title refers to a fraction of a staggering statistic—millions enduring hunger—yet every life tells an individual story of pain and resilience. The central figure, with empty hands except for a single vessel, embodies helplessness and the haunting void that hunger creates. Her expression and posture reveal exhaustion, despair, and a neglected human need. This work is deeply personal; even though I am thousands of kilometers away in India, these images invade my thoughts during my most sacred moments of namaz and private reflection. The splattered background serves as a visual metaphor for the emotional turmoil and empathy that break through my solitude. Through this painting, I aim to connect the physical absence of food with the spiritual and emotional turmoil it causes, bridging distant locations through shared humanity and compassion.

Kashmir by Zoya Singh
Watercolor and Gouache on Paper
48" x 72"

Teta's Diary by Zoya Singh
Crossstitch
7.5" x 8.5"

Kashmir, the crown.

The resilience of Kashmiri’s cannot be taken down just as a king can never lose his title. In dire times, the great dove turns into an eagle and soars high and higher, guiding, leading, protecting the sacredness of what was and what is to become.Kashmir is not just a place, it’s a living entity, a vibration that once felt cannot be forgotten. An ode to the land for the protection, for its versatility and for bearing the weight of India, we have much to be grateful for.

This independence we celebrate and honour the land, its inhabitants and its legacy. May we always respect, care and provide for its guardianship and loyalty. Kashmir that protects. Kashmir that provides. Kashmir that is proud.

Ideal vs. Reality by Mohd. Intiyaz
Acrylic on Canvas
48" x 36"

Endangered Existence by Anurag Basak
Watercolour & Ink on Paper
8.3" x 11.7" Each, Set of 4

This series reflects on how the very act of voting, that is meant to empower, is twisted in a system built to consume. The finger rises with trust, but what follows is a gradual descent into an abyss of uncontrolled treachery. Even when power devours completely, civilisation keeps participating, even as it’s being swallowed whole. What remains is a faint gesture, trapped in a loop of hope and endless betrayal.

The State Machinery by Anurag Basak
Watercolour & Ink on Paper
54" x 34"

This painting shows how the authoritarian power quietly take over people’s lives and homes. What begins as everyday life, slowly gets pulled into a system that drains identity and freedom. The red river flowing in the middle marks the shift from free existence to controlled production. As the trees thin out, the colours fade, and nature becomes distant, the takeover becomes slowly visible. But by then, there’s nothing left to return to.

Doomscrolling by Gurdev Singh
Mixed Media on Paper
32" x 26.5"

Government officials, bureaucrats and people in administration often keep up with their uniforms and the clothes they wear, the bandhgalas and safari suits. There appears to be a greater liability placed on maintaining appearances rather than focusing on duties. Over the years, the work, the so-called paperwork, has turned into the process of doomscrolling.

Aura Farming, Feeds Hood by Gurdev Singh
Acrylic on Canvas
16" x 20"

A recent memory of the farmers’ protest stood out for the way it entered popular media, Punjabi songs and feature films. Protests or acts of dissent often succumb to certain trends or to a catchy moment that goes viral on reels. A protest may or may not lead to change but it can lead to an “aurafarm” on the internet.

Who's The One Insane by Siddharth Soni
Stone Colour on Cloth
12" x 16" Each

All these paintings are reconstructed from the photographs taken at the time of demolition in 1992. In a satirical twist, all the human figures in those photographs have been replaced with the face of monkeys.

This metaphorical use of monkeys serves to highlight the absurdity of the situation and the blind adherence to ideologies that resulted into communal violence. So far more than 2,500 people have been killed (official data), thousands wounded and displaced due to these ideological contradictions. This chapter in our history underscores the folly of blindly following the dictates of others, akin to monkeys mimicking the actions of their peers.

In a society where, individual perspectives are often overshadowed by the loud voices of a few, it is all too common for people to abandon critical thinking and simply follow the crowd. The use of monkeys in these paintings serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of such blind obedience.

Venmani Martyr’s day 2021 by Nitheen Ramalingam
Oil on Canvas
Variable

Through figurative paintings and drawings, Nitheen has been meditating on people and their surroundings. An underlying aggrieved energy, suggestive of his concerns with alienation, oppression, and emancipation runs through these works.

The current body of paintings is based on witnessing the commemoration of the Kilvenmani martyr’s day. Nitheen hopes to express viscerally the embodied unity and joy in the organized oppressed people but also to meditate on the decline and failures of this movement in recent history.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the village of Kilvenmani in the Nagapattinam district of southeastern India witnessed a horrific massacre. Under exploitative and unequal land relations, the peasants had become organized and militant; frustrated, one of the landlords and his henchmen killed 44 landless laborers by setting them on fire inside a hut.

Since then, this region where his forebearers are from, has undergone several waves of land redistribution, transforming social relations. The day is now remembered with organized strength and joy by the peasants and the others in the region.

Nitheen witnessed this in 2021. Using pastels and oil paint, he is meditating on the scenes of the commemoration. The character of Oil paint lends itself to expressing a sense of passion and hope simultaneously with a gloomy undertone.

This body of paintings is affected conceptually and formally by my sculptural experimentation to build large objects and site-specific monuments.

Through the readings from James E. Young and Miwon Kwon, Nitheen was introduced to the concept of "anti-monumental" art and other approaches to public art and community-based projects being explored by contemporary Western Artists. Similarly, delving into the writings of Nav Hak and Ken Lum provided him with a nuanced understanding of multiculturalism and identity politics within the art world.

Half Lakhori Series by Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri

Lakhori Bricks (17th Cen), Iron
4" x 6" (approx) Each, Set of 36

Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri comes from the city once known as Faizabad, now renamed Ayodhya—a renaming that itself is a political act, an erasure of memory, and a rewriting of history. Founded by the Nawabs in the 17th century, Faizabad once flourished with a rich Islamic visual culture, grand monuments, and palatial houses that stood as living witnesses of its cosmopolitan past.

He is also bound to this history by blood. His mother inherited a house from their ancestors, descendants of the Nawabs—a home that felt like a palace to him in childhood. Its grandeur, its scale, its lived history shaped his earliest experiences of space, art, and memory. But the city that nurtured him is no longer the same.

Today, the monuments of Faizabad stand like abandoned bodies, slowly crumbling, neglected by design. The grandeur is deliberately left to decay, as the ruling regime thrives on selective memory, promoting one history while silencing and demolishing another. The BJP government’s politics of cultural erasure does not simply forget Muslim architecture—it actively discriminates against it, allowing it to fall into ruin, or worse, tearing it down under the guise of “development” and “heritage cleansing.”

When Jafri walks through the city now, he sees fragments of once-glorious monuments scattered like waste. Lakhori bricks, the very bones of the architectural past, lie strewn across alleys, sometimes carried by donkey cart hawkers, sold cheaply as rubble, dumped as garbage. He often collects them, sometimes even purchases them—each brick to him a fragment of memory, a silent witness, a heartbeat of a forgotten time.

When he visits his maternal home in Faizabad and Lucknow, he recalls the days when walls were alive with intricate calligraphy, adorned with words that carried both faith and beauty. Today those inscriptions are buried under white lime, layered over for festivals, as if celebration requires forgetting. In the attempt to “renew,” we erase. In the attempt to “modernize,” we destroy.

As an artist, witnessing this violence—this slow, systematic erasure of memory before his own eyes—is profoundly painful. His practice is an act of resistance. By collecting these discarded bricks, he tries to reassemble fragments of a disappearing world, to remember what is being forced to be forgotten, and to hold space for grief, memory, and truth in the face of erasure.

His work is not simply about ruins; it is about the politics of ruins. Each brick is a reminder of what is being deliberately lost, of a culture being silenced, of a history rewritten. In reclaiming them, he tries to breathe back time, to give voice to what has been buried, and to resist the violence of forgetting.

Trespassers by Revant Dasgupta

Acrylic on Canvas
21" x 30"

Buffering by Tahsin Akhtar

Archival Print, Video on Framed 10.5" Tablet
W 28" x H 16"

By looping a private gesture in public view , the work Buffering explores how
personal choices are politicised, How genuine concerns are drowned in noise, and
power perpetuates itself through delays. It highlights "buffering zones" where
activity appears constant but lacks resolution, leaving individuals visible yet
unheard, in motion but stagnant. It is in this architecture of pause that silence
becomes less a virtue and more a system.

7 Decades by Khan Shamim Akhtar

Acrylic on Korai Grass Mat
24" x 72"

7 Decades shows the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian people from the start of Israeli occupation to the Present day. The complex, layered design symbolizes the cycles of violence, where brief moments of calm are interrupted by sudden attacks. Each section, like a building that collapses piece by piece, represents a time of destruction, trapping lives underneath. Palestinians, similar to those caught under debris, exist in a state of uncertainty, unsure whether survival will last minutes, days, or years; their fate depends on Israel’s decisions or the heavy weight of circumstance. The uneven edges and disrupted visual flow reflect the instability and fragility of life under siege. This artwork portrays not only a political history but also the suffocating reality of living through decades of occupation. Time is marked by constant suffering, and survival becomes both a daily struggle and a part of their history.

Hum Dekhenge by Harun Al Rashid

Water Colour, Embroidery Mesh, Paper Cut, Text
12" x 17" Each

This artistic endeavour emerges as a response to the systematic erasure of Urdu from educational curricula and public discourse. Urdu transcends its linguistic status; it serves as a repository of our collective memory, a reflective mirror of the syncretic essence of the subcontinent. Its script has been indelibly etched through the verses of poets, the melodies of songs, and the narratives of our shared histories.

The recent removal of Urdu from academic curricula, coupled with the demolition of historic mosques under the pretext of encroachment, signifies more than mere policy alterations; it constitutes an assault on cultural identity. These actions strive to sever the intricate threads that weave our diverse tapestry, replacing them with a monochromatic narrative.

However, culture exhibits remarkable resilience. While Urdu may be extracted from textbooks, its cadence permeates our streets, its metaphors adorn our expressions, and its essence permeates our ethos.

This project stands as a poetic defiance against such erasures, compelling a reclamation ofour linguistic heritage and a reaffirmation of our pluralistic roots. Urdu encompasses more than mere script and sound; it embodies the cadence of our collective memory, the ink of our shared histories, and the soul of our syncretic culture. From the ghazals of Ghalib to the nazms of Faiz, it has articulated our joys, sorrows, and aspirations.

This project serves as a testament against the systematic erasure of a language that has been anintegral component of our identity. Through visual metaphors and lyrical expressions, it endeavours to underscore the inherent value of Urdu within our cultural mosaic and to resist the forces that seekto marginalise it.

Through visual metaphors and lyrical expressions, this work seeks to underscore the inherent valueof Urdu within our cultural mosaic and to resist the forces that seek to marginalise it.Let this be our poetic resistance—a call to preserve the linguistic threads that weave our diversetapestry and to ensure that the verses of our ancestors continue to resonate in the hearts of futuregenerations.