The India of their art

Seven vibrant, incisive millennial artists show us the country they see and want to discuss

It is a Friday morning in Kolkata and the sidewalk outside Gem Cinema on the arterial AJC Bose Road is bustling with activity. Gem is an abandoned single screen movie theatre that was once special to Calcuttans. When you enter it, you expect to see signs of this abandonment. But nothing can prepare you for what you witness as you step inside.

An Indian farmer standing up for his rights. Faces crying for help to battle injustice. A series of missiles being fired in the name of a God with the strains of Gandhiji’s favourite hymn Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram playing in the background.

Gem Cinema, or what remains of it, was one of the venues of the 4th CIMA Art Awards this February, burgeoning with ideas of talented young artists. Most of these millennials—we’ve picked seven of them for this story—hail from small-town India and seem unblemished by politics that encourage you to follow, not think.

“Our 1,000+ entries this year showed a maturity that could only have been kindled by the pandemic,” says Rakhi Sarkar, director and curator of the Centre of International Modern Art (CIMA), who has made these awards one of the most respected in the country. “It is satisfying and fulfilling to see that the agenda we had to reach out to the young is being fulfilled. We also needed voices from the backwaters of India, which were losing out. They are vibrant and incisive.”

While the awards were held in truncated form this year due to the pandemic, the toptier jury, the overflowing audience and the sizeable prize money (the winner, Suman Chandra, gets ₹5 lakh and a show at CIMA), made it a big success.

Most importantly, a walk through the venues showed that independent thinking, the power of expression, and the courage to speak, aren’t dead amongst the youth.

“WE NEEDED VOICES FROM THE BACKWATERS OF INDIA, WHICH WERE LOSING OUT. THEY ARE VIBRANT AND INCISIVE.” —RAKHI SARKAR, DIRECTOR, CIMA