The 65th National Exhibition, conducted by the Lalit Kala Akademi, was formally inaugurated on 21 August 2026. I went to see it yesterday. Densely displayed, and complete with ‘price’ and other details—title, medium, size and year—the works, in general, and the exhibition, in particular, felt more like an ‘affordable’ art fair (the kind that these days are conducted in hotel rooms, washrooms, corridors and lawns) than a ‘National’ exhibition.
I should not be cynical, I told myself as I waded through the rough works of art. At one point, I thought that established artists who have already had several solo and gallery exhibitions should not participate in this, even if they feel that a coveted prize from the Akademi—or at least participation in the exhibition—elevates their status among the art fraternity, otherwise known as the art market. This kind of ‘rising’ is merely an illusion. They should listen to the veteran artist Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, who, in an interview with a leading daily last year, said that artists have ‘outgrown’ their need for the Akademi and its services. This simply means that we have a matured art market, with professionals handling its affairs, which also means that the Akademi has failed on all these fronts.
Last year, at the 64th National Exhibition, there was an overflow of spontaneous depictions of cows and gods as painterly images. This time, beyond the first two halls, the cows and gods have stopped grazing. The psychology of the organisers is clear. Government officials—these days, ministers do not have much time to waste on art openings—who come to inaugurate the exhibition obviously lose interest by the time they reach the third hall, for two obvious reasons. One, fatigue sets in when one is forced to confront unfamiliar things while maintaining a smiling face. Two, visual overload is always distracting.
For a regular art lover, the show begins after the second hall. My verdict: there is nothing spectacular on offer. I should say that the best works on display have already been taken, with a ‘sold’ sticker attached to them. Some are bought for their visual freshness and experimental verve. Others are acquired for their obvious mythological references. Buyers are never idiots; they know that it is their money going into somebody’s pockets. But from the stickers, one could clearly understand the mindset of the buyers. Those who bought works with religious subjects seem to have bought them for their drawing rooms. The other buyers who picked up works of ‘art’ know that they are going to see these artists grow and, if they do not, will make efforts to cultivate them.
Two works placed side by side caught my particular attention. One shows a woman clad in saffron, wearing a red bindi on her forehead, with two wings growing from her shoulders. The work is titled Ambition. The next depicts Hanuman in the Ashoka Forest, where Sita Devi is kept under a tree while her demonic sentinels are seen in various stages of slumber. The theatrical appearance of Hanuman is quite phallic, relegating Sita Devi to ignominy.
Seen together, I thought about the intelligence of the curator—though nobody has claimed the curatorship—or the lack of it. A woman clad in an ideological robe who wants to take off into the sky is itself an oxymoron. She seems to have forgotten that the ideology she has accepted is not going to let her fly. At maximum, she could become a member of the ideological crowd, if it lets her fly beyond the streets.
Sita Mata, in our childhood imagination, has always been the central character, especially when she is abducted to Lanka. In her presence, Hanuman is usually shown in a diminutive form, genuflecting and consoling her. Times have changed, and Hanuman, one of my favourite characters from the epic, has become a ferocious sticker on the backs of auto-rickshaws and cars. We can clearly see where the artist and the buyer stand when it comes to the epic and its ideological use.
You don’t miss much even if you fail to visit.
JohnyML
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