«The art system’s real discomfort stems from an inferiority complex in relation to reality». (Francesco Bonami in Il Foglio, 20 July 2022)

On show at the Jhaveri Contemporary gallery in Mumbai there is a beautiful solo exhibition by Prabhavathi Meppayil, an artist born in 1965 in the federal state of Karnataka. Thick copper cuts embroider the regular framework of white canvases; circular grooves incise sharp cubes, set within a structure to which not a detail could be added or removed. The artist stages the minimal manual of a scrupulous universe; few geometric guidelines, ample intervals to meditate on them. Between the terse walls of the third floor of the Davidas Mansion in the international quarter of Colaba, the eyes breathe. My gaze floats and takes in the inert evening light, finally casting itself out the window and leading me to remember: until a few minutes ago I was there. Under the opaque scowl of the gateway of India I was frantically searching for drinking water, wriggling to keep my orientation against the irresistible current of the crowd and constantly checking the pouch where I keep my money and documents. I rewind my gaze and return to the gallery: I notice that I am the only visitor. I think it is the first time since I have been in India that there are no other human beings in my vision field. The spasmodic swarming of life has remained outside the gallery threshold: for a few meters, art leads a secluded existence.

VV. AA.,“Prabhavathi Meppayil”, installation view, 2024, courtesy Jhaveri Contemporary

There is no compromise in Varanasi. The Vedas say it was called Kāśī, ‘the shining one’; the British colonialists misunderstood, swapped the v for a b and mispronounced the name to Benares, trading teeth for a dull, inoffensive chuckle. The city rises along the western flank of the Ganges, where the ghāṭ, long stairways that paraphrase the city’s frayed web of alleyways on a bank wide open to the dawn, follow one another. To walk along the promenade that skirts the succession of ghāṭ is to glide through the squalor and vertiginous peaks of which India is capable; the pious ablutions of pilgrims, the impertinent kites of children like the orifices of heaven, the crematory pyres that burn festively only to be gutted and the ashes distributed in the Ganges: a long, dizzying dizziness. The murti, the effigies of the deities, are the only stable features of this iridescent landscape: iconic, like the orange faces of Gaṇeśa and Hanuman, or aniconic, like the soles of the feet of the deities etched in marble. The artistic workmanship of these images is far from refined, and they are often blunted and deformed by time and the insistent touch of the worshippers. It would be foolish to celebrate them as autonomous expression forms: they are masks, enlivened by the testimony of the devotees, completely immersed in the swarming flux that surrounds them; when the flux dries up, they will remain cold and inert, satisfied with their fulfilled function.

VV. AA.,“Prabhavathi Meppayil”, installation view, 2024, courtesy Jhaveri Contemporary

The basalt sculptures in Elephanta Island smile at the electric passage of tourists and wayward monkeys. Their seraphic gazes have been caressing the world for one thousand four hundred years, but the refinement of their workmanship remains unsurpassed. The straight forehead, the flawlessness of the eyelashes; the cut of the lip, the impossible suppleness of the chin; as to say the classics, to which not a detail can be added nor removed. Looking at them again, caught in the trap of the perfection of the canon, it is undeniable that those stone limbs can be believed to be inhabited. That behind a motionless face the divinity breathes, prescribes, wriggles: it is a thought that comes naturally. And yet no one lights incense for these perfect murti; no one asks for help or directions, no one surrounds them with his hands like a relative or closes his eyes to search within himself for the compendium of those images. The flickering sparks that illuminate their contours are not those that light the ritual fire but the camera flashes. Does life exist without an interlocutor? The divinity does not dwell where no one seeks it any more. Melancholy overcomes the realization that – from this island – divinity has long since averted its gaze. In Elephanta, now, History is on stage and and as Giorgio Caproni writes: «History is dead testimony. And it is worth as much as a fantasy».

The temples of the Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, area reserved for cremations, ph. Kamil Sanders

Taking photographs is forbidden in the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi. All equipment must be left outside the entrance, along with shoes. The visitor crosses the threshold hoping to find refuge for some time from the hustle and bustle of the street; inside the holy place he finds an even more brazen bustle. This is the temple of Hanuman, the monkey-faced wind god who disrupts the things of the world: neither silence nor austerity is given, but the teeming of life at its peak. Observants wait their turn to glance at the effigy of the god, the murti. They arrive at the edge of the cell with teeth and jostling: there is barely time for a glance at the person, before being swallowed up again by the crowd. The icon itself doesn’t really have anything special about it; a semi-oval slab of bright orange in which two amused white eyes are engraved. The murti is worthless in itself: it is a mask. Around her swirls an apparatus of garlands, jewellery, monetary offerings, shrieked and murmured prayers, solitary vocations and collective outbursts. The murti is alive. It embroiders together divinity and human consortium: a work that participates in the swarming of existence, that is an active part of it: the artist and art have stepped aside, and it now walks by itself.

On the left: Pūjā ritual along the shore of Varanasi; on the right: a murti, ph. Kamil Sanders

In Mumbai, not far from Jhaveri Contemporary, six exhibitions are being staged simultaneously at the Jehangir Art Gallery. The boundaries between them are not exactly clear. Along the walls, spiritual masters take turns with labourers and boatmen portrayed in ragged brushstrokes. Many of the works stage the festivals that mark the anxious turn of the Hindu calendar; rickshaws and sacrosanct cows pass between them. The building within which the exhibition rooms are cut out is huge and dusty, crowded throughout. It is not opening day but the crowds pour in from all sides, abrogating the boundary that separates the museum from the street. The Jehangir Art Gallery, I discover from a price list displayed prominently, rarely represents artists directly, rather rents out rooms for solo and group shows. Perhaps some would consider this unserious: not the patrons – of all ranks and affiliations – who study the works carefully and bark out comments I don’t understand. Some, in front of the paintings with religious subjects, brush their foreheads as a sign of respect; it may be habit or familiarity.

Detail of a painting by artist Sunil Chandra Pal exhibited at the Jehangir Art Gallery, ph. Kamil Sanders

When my visit is over, I leave the gallery and return to the street; there is not much difference. After a few steps I stumble upon a pile of stalls selling watercolors and good drawings. I think it is only by chance that their authors are this way, while some others have the pride of the gallery. Next month, who knows, maybe they will switch places. Art’s highest aspiration, I think I understand, is to strip itself of its own species of origin and thunderously re–enter the crowd, with its own load of impossibilities. Eternally opposed to the totalitarianisms of History, this persona non grata participates in the spasmodic swarming of life – and takes sides. Thus it pronounces the end of its own inferiority complex.

Kamil Sanders

Born in Venice in 1998, after graduating from high school, he moved to Milan where he studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 2023 he published his first essay for the Calibano series by Prospero Editore: “Tradizione e Trasgressione. Note dall’India per un’arte indipendente”. In 2024 he won the Europa in Versi Giovani prize, which was followed by the publication in 2025 of his anthology “sillabario del terribile incanto” by Quaderni del Bardo Editore. He is currently attending the two-year course in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at Naba in Milan.