When Sarmaya got the chance to host an event with two of the most celebrated figures in Indian dance, we knew we had to push the envelope. We partnered with the dance company beej to bring Mallika Sarabhai and Anita Ratnam to Mumbai and engage them in a conversation about the transformative power of dance.… Read more »
Nudes reveal more about the artist than their naked subjects—at least, it’s fun to pretend this. Consider FN Souza’s The Traders. Four figures stand in a line, touching each other intimately. The sexual organs are well-defined, the faces are mangled beyond recognition. Was Souza feeling cynical when he painted this? Did he see sex as… Read more »
“Modern, contemporary, ancient, folk. All of these terms really dissolve in the face of art-making.”
We could not have asked for a more perfect location for this very special debut
Dates: 21st September, 2017 to 18th February,2018 Venue: The Tasting Room, Good Earth, Raghuvanshi Mills, Mumbai One of the earliest known ways of storytelling on the subcontinent, Tholu Bommalata or shadow puppet theatre is a traditional craft, passed down from father to son in the Rayalseema region of current-day Andhra Pradesh. Players manipulate the puppets… Read more »
Click here to take a virtual tour of our first exhibition Portraits are everywhere. We think we know what they are for and what they do—they depict what people look like and they capture or distil their particular identity. But with our first-ever exhibition, ‘Portrait of a Nation, A Nation in Portraits: 19th century Photography… Read more »
‘Capturing your cityscape’ allowed photographers across India a chance to reimagine a historical image through a contemporary lens. We were thrilled to see how monuments as varied as the Asafi Masjid in Lucknow and the Shore Temple in Mahabalipuram were interpreted today.
Our exhibition was hosted at a gallery located in one of the city’s most charming historical districts. To explore this neighbourhood and situate the show in a more local context, we teamed up with professional heritage-walkers and Bombay-lovers, Simin Patel of Bombaywalla, conservation architect Kruti Garg and Alisha Sadikot and Nishita Zachariah.
We partnered with Avid Learning to debate the true meaning of archives today; got veteran collectors and antiquarians Paul Abraham, Aditya Arya and Roland Belgrave to share stories of the chase with us; and organized a very special panel for children with our young photographers from Dharavi.
Professor Arpan Mukherjee of Santiniketan and Madhavan Pillai, the curator of our show, held workshops in vintage techniques like albumen prints, cyanotypes and painted photographs.
Founder of Sarmaya Paul Abraham and curator Madhavan Pillai took smaller groups on tours of the exhibition at Pundole’s, Mumbai that threw light on the different themes of the collection. It was a great way to get intimately acquainted with the landscape of a different time.