Artist Shipra Bhattacharya brings five decades of her work to Chennai’s Lalit Kala Akademi
Artist Shipra Bhattacharya is hosting a retrospective exhibition at Chennai’s Lalit Kala Akademi, showcasing five decades of her work. The collection spans from her student years in the 1970s to the present, reflecting her evolving perspective on social issues, human character, and personal experience.
Why it matters
This exhibition provides a significant historical overview of a prominent Indian artist's career, highlighting the intersection of personal autobiography and social commentary in contemporary art.
At the Lalit Kala Akademi a woman’s body can hold a city, and desire returns repeatedly, as both a title and an idea. Elsewhere, war, protest, environmental anxiety and the peculiar helplessness of watching a society in crisis enter the frame.
Retrospective by Shipra Bhattacharya, currently on view at the gallery, brings works from Shipra’s student years in the late 1970s to the present.
There is a depth in her paintings: bodies, creatures, objects and fragments of social life dot the canvas, each seemingly carrying worlds withing worlds. At times, the teeming visual worlds recall a contemporary Hieronymus Bosch, but seen through a distinctly feminine and contemporary gaze, where fantasy is threaded with desire, violence, and the minutiae of lived experience.
Shipra Bhattacharya | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
She by Shipra Bhattacharya | Photo Credit: Shipra Bhattacharya / Facebook
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