Echoes Within: Four creators showcase evolving landscape of contemporary Indian art
In this photo essay, we showcase a range of artworks from a four-artist exhibition at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.
Launched in 2014, PhotoSparks is a weekly feature from YourStory, with photographs that celebrate the spirit of creativity and innovation. In the earlier 950 posts, we featured an art festival, cartoon gallery. world music festival, telecom expo, millets fair, climate change expo, wildlife conference, startup festival, Diwali rangoli, and jazz festival.
Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath is hosting this weekend an exhibition titled Echoes Within, featuring the works of four artists. They are Shruti Gupta Kasana, Amrish Malvankar, Nitya Soni, and Mahesh M. Karambele (see our coverage of a decade of exhibitions at this popular Bengaluru hub here).
The four sets of artworks are distinct in medium and visual language that span abstract works, mixed media, figurative expression, and conceptual narratives. Some of the common themes, as seen in this photo essay, are transformation, spirituality, awakening, and renewal.
The exhibition has drawn a wide range of art collectors, curators, cultural influencers, students, and other art lovers. The artworks collectively encourage contemplation and conversation, in addition to showcasing diverse interpretations of creativity.
Shruti Gupta Kasana is a multidisciplinary Indian artist whose practice bridges fine art, textile craft, and design. She is a graduate of NIFT Mumbai and Symbiosis Institute of Management.
Her artworks fuse figurative expression with tactile materials such as jute, embroidery, hand knitting, and tapestry. She has exhibited across India and internationally, and drawn acclaim for her blend of storytelling, sustainability and craft-led innovation.
By blending jute with cotton, Kasana has developed an eco-textile that supports both artistic expression and environmental responsibility. Her artworks display a mixture of textural surfaces, layered pigments, and handcrafted elements.
Architect-turned-artist Amrish Malvankar is a graduate of the Sir JJ School of Architecture, Mumbai. His artworks combine spatial sensibility with visual language and have been featured at World Art Dubai and other exhibitions in London, Miami, Zurich, and New York.
Mahesh Karambele is an abstract artist whose works have been showcased across India, Europe, Australia, and the US. His vibrant palette and dynamic brushwork reflect a deep engagement with colour, movement and existential enquiry.
One of his outstanding mixed-media artworks is titled Tide’s Requiem, and depicts transformation through erosion. He uses discarded remnants of fishing boats that are surrendered to the sea, reflecting nature’s relentless forces.
Such artworks convey messages of impermanence, renewal and the cyclical nature of existence. Discarded objects that are reclaimed by nature are reimagined as vessels of artistic expression.
“When nature reclaims what we discard, it reveals a different kind of truth. Destruction, for me, is never an end but the beginning,” Mahesh Karambele tells YourStory.
Amrish Malvankar showcases his body of work called Mindscape. “My work explores the quiet tension between thought and feeling. I’m interested in spaces where the mind seeks order, but emotion gently disrupts it,” he describes.
“I see sustainability not as a limitation, but as a new artistic language. My exhibition, titled Sampurn Vrindavan, represents the balance between nature, divinity and human existence,” Shruti Gupta Kasana explains.
Nitya Soni is a self-taught contemporary artist whose practice bridges art, science and social observation. He is also a researcher at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and has previously worked with organisations such as DRDO.
His showcased artworks draw inspiration from nature, using trees and changing seasons as metaphors for emotional growth, loss and renewal. Other exhibits reflect material desires and the powerful forces of modernisation.
He bridges art and inquiry in his eye-catching and unusual artworks. “The ordinary holds extraordinary meaning if we pause long enough to look,” he says.
In sum, the exhibition offers a nuanced glimpse into the evolving landscape of contemporary Indian art. Some of the artists draw on mythology for inspiration, while others create messages of sustainability by their use of reclaimed materials.
Now, what have you done today to pause in your busy schedule and harness your creative side for a better world?
Mahesh Karambele
Shruti Gupta Kasana
Amrish Malvankar
(All photographs taken by Madanmohan Rao on location at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.)