METHOD KALA GHODA
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

Janamaaz 01 by Sajid Wajid Shaikh

Hand-woven Roll Cap Firecrackers
25.5" x 42.5"

This work exposes the marginalization of muslim community as it highlights the growing islamophobia within the country. Numerous accounts have surfaced where offering namaz was considered as a criminal act. And people have been persecuted.

The work reimagines the prayer mat: a sacred object of devotion as one made from roll cap crackers, a material synonymous with sudden noise, disruption, and violence. This transformation becomes an unsettling metaphor for the hostile environment faced by the Muslim community in contemporary India.

In recent years, numerous documented cases have emerged where the simple act of offering namaz has been criminalized, met with suspicion, or violently interrupted. Through this charged material choice, the work exposes the deepening currents of Islamophobia and the systemic marginalization of a community whose expressions of faith are increasingly framed as acts of defiance.

The prayer mat here becomes both a site of worship and a terrain of risk, a quiet plea for dignity laid upon the possibility of detonation.

Khirki 2 & 3 by Riya Chandwani

Paper Burn and Gouache on Rice Paper
22" x 33" Each

These works depict the windows of abandoned Sindhi homes—silent witnesses to Partition, bearing the absence of those who once stood behind them. Each architectural opening, rendered with its own distinct pattern, becomes more than a structure; it becomes a vessel of memory. Riya imagines these windows as keepers of the lives once lived around them—of glances exchanged, voices that passed through, and the shifting light and shadow of daily rhythms now lost.

These openings, once meant to let light flow between inside and outside, now pose a question: can they also become portals through which people might someday return, physically or emotionally, to the spaces they once called home?

Demographics by Anurag Basak

Watercolour & Ink on Paper
8.3" x 11.7" Each, Set of 6

This series looks at how the power to vote has been reduced to a mere symbol without any real substance. The finger, that was once a sign of bold voices, is now marked, manipulated, or ignored. The rocks here represent the weight of systemic control of institutions that never move but rather shape everything at their will. This work aims at showing how democracy can look intact while its people remain powerless.

Some Things That I See
And Some Things That I
Heard Series by M Thangshangpha

Crayon Smudged on Cotton, Handmade Paper
65" x 54"

Kuvalai by Krithika Shriram (Set of 6)
Anthotype (Rose Pigment on Paper)
5.83" x 8.27" Each

Kuvalai is a series of self-portraits by Krithika Sriram, created using rose pigments. Once banned for Dalit women in Tamil Nadu, roses here become a means of reclaiming and subverting a material historically tied to her oppression. Placing the Dalit female body—central to caste-based control and endogamy, as analysed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar—at the heart of the work, Sriram confronts the systemic erasure of Dalit women’s narratives. The prints, made as anthotypes, are intentionally impermanent, their fading mirroring the fleeting societal attention and ongoing marginalisation of Dalit women.

Moody Sahab by Gurdev Singh
Oil on Canvas
20" x 24"

Moody Sahab recalls the moment when the current Prime Minister disguised himself as a Sikh during the Emergency in 1975, maintaining the same attention to appearance or "drip" that continues today.

Read Receipts Off by Gurdev Singh
Oil on Canvas
24" x 36"

Using satire and tongue-in-cheek humor as the artist's forms of dissent, you see two individuals, likely close friends or associates, sharing a message that is censored. Either they are left on read, or they deliberately avoid revealing what they are actually sharing in these times.

Mahad Satyagraha by Osheen Siva
Papier-mâché, White Cement and Acrylic
18'' x 10'' x 9''

This artefact forms part of an ongoing counter-archive series, employing papier-mâché to reimagine pivotal moments in anti-caste resistance history. It depicts the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927, led by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, a landmark assertion of Dalit rights wherein caste-oppressed communities defied entrenched hierarchies by collectively drinking from the public Chavdar tank in Mahad, Maharashtra. The event also witnessed the symbolic burning of the Manusmriti, a Brahmanical legal text codifying caste oppression. This series mobilizes material and symbolic forms to foreground Dalit resistance and reclaim epistemic agency through embodied, anti-caste historiographies.

Demographics by Anurag Basak

Watercolour & Ink on Paper
8.3" x 11.7" Each, Set of 6

This series looks at how the power to vote has been reduced to a mere symbol without any real substance. The finger, that was once a sign of bold voices, is now marked, manipulated, or ignored. The rocks here represent the weight of systemic control of institutions that never move but rather shape everything at their will. This work aims at showing how democracy can look intact while its people remain powerless.

Self Respect Movement (சுயமரியாதை இயக்கம்) by Osheen Siva

Clay
Variable Sizes, Set of 10

This series of ten clay tablets maps the overlapping histories of protest and reform within the Self-Respect Movement in Tamil Nadu. Each tablet references a pivotal figure, medium, or event that together form a counter-archive that honors the voices of the historically marginalized in the struggle for social equality.

The Neighbourhood is Online by Revant Dasgupta

Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 36"

A Silenced Protest, Hasdeo Aranya Bachao, Chhattisgarh by Bhanu Shrivastav

Carving on offset Inked Block and Silk Screen
8.3" x 11.7" Each

This artwork combines the tactile depth of a carved inked block with the layered subtlety of silk-screen printing, merging imagery and text into a charged political statement. In the background, the Preamble to the Constitution of India is printed, its promise of justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity serving as a stark counterpoint to the lived reality it overlays. The foreground carving is one of seven visuals narrating the enduring struggle of the Adivasi people of Hasdeo Aranya, Chhattisgarh—a decade-long protest, ongoing since 2012, against coal mining in their ancestral lands.

Hasdeo Aranya, known as the “lungs of Chhattisgarh,” is a rich forest and a crucial elephant corridor. Home to over 20,000 Adivasis from Gond, Oraon, and other tribal communities, it faces existential threat from mining projects led by major corporations. Despite constitutional protections for tribal land under the Fifth Schedule and the Forest Rights Act, large-scale deforestation and displacement have advanced, threatening biodiversity and severing co-existence between humans and wildlife.

The carved figure here evokes a silent march—an emblem of displacement and resilience—signifying the community’s cohabitation with elephants and their determination to protect their land. This is a visual of unheard voices, where silence itself becomes an act of defiance against erasure.

Protest 12 by Mohd. Intiyaz

Mixed Media on Paper
5.5" x 8"

Stones of Survival by Khan Shamim Akhtar

Acrylic on Korai Grass Mat
24" x 30"

In Stones of Survival, Khan Shamim Akhtar presents a stark plate filled with rough stones, symbolising the severe hunger faced by Palestinians in Gaza under Israel’s ongoing blockade and military actions. As of August 2025, over 2.15 million people remain at risk of famine due to aid restrictions, with reports of widespread malnutrition and child deaths from hunger. Drawing from real accounts of Palestinians tying stones around their stomachs to dull the ache of emptiness, the work frames this act as both a means of survival and a form of resistance against occupation.

The plate—ordinarily a vessel for food—now bears these unyielding stones, evoking both sustenance denied and the projectiles of the Intifada. Through earthy tones and textured, watercolor-inspired forms, Khan channels anger and sorrow, critiquing systemic violence while honouring Palestinian resilience. The work confronts viewers with the human cost of injustice, transforming absence into a call for solidarity.

Echoes of Survival by Khan Shamim Akhtar

Acrylic on Korai Grass Mat
36" Dia

In Echoes of Survival, the second iteration of Stones of Survival, Khan Shamim Akhtar reimagines the plate as a mirror, contrasting their own abundance with the severe hunger endured by Palestinians in Gaza under Israel’s ongoing actions. As of August 11, 2025, over 2.15 million Gazans face famine due to aid blockades, with reports of people consuming boiled grass, animal feed, and tying stones to their stomachs to numb hunger.

The watercolor-inspired work depicts an Indian compartmentalised plate—usually filled with varied dishes—now holding rough stones and sparse, grim remnants, symbolising scarcity and resilience. Vibrant, textured compartments reflect the artist’s privilege, sharply contrasted with the muted tones of deprivation and the presence of tainted aid, underscoring the suffering that has claimed over 50,000 lives (Web ID: 19). Frayed edges evoke a land torn apart, as the piece channels anger and empathy to critique systemic violence while honouring an unbreakable spirit.

Not All Hands Are For Help by Khan Shamim Akhtar

Acrylic on Korai Grass Mat
36" x 24"

Not All Hands Are for Help reflects Khan Shamim Akhtar's deep disturbance in prayer amid the ongoing conflict in Palestine. The prayer mat (janamaz), typically a sacred space for communion with God, becomes visually and emotionally marked by the violence witnessed in the news. As the artist prays for Palestinian survival, they confront the reality that others raise their hands against that hope—most starkly symbolised by the United States’ fifth veto of a UN ceasefire bill, delivered with a show of hands.

The work contrasts two gestures: on the left, the red hand of a U.S. senator raised to block peace; on the right, the small, fragile hand of a Palestinian child reaching for help amid destruction. Though both hands are raised, they embody opposing intentions—one to deny relief, the other to plead for it—capturing the stark paradox of global politics and human suffering.

Protest 23 by Mohd. Intiyaz

Mixed Media on Paper
5.5" x 8"

Stitch Happens by Tyler

Spray Paint on Mount Board
31.5" x 43.5"

METHOD KALA GHODA
ON VIEW UNTIL 21ST SEPTEMBER