Extraordinary Line

Avijna Bhattacharya

5 October 2025 - 10 January 2026

Avijna Bhattacharya

KNMA, Saket, Delhi

About the exhibition

Extraordinary Line situates drawing at the center of contemporary critique, asserting that the line is not merely a preparatory tool but a vector of thought, dissent, and mediation. The exhibition brings together intergenerational practices tracing transitions from post-Independence India to the post-liberalisation era, revealing the enduring capacity of the drawn line to negotiate social, cultural, and political realities.

Unfolding in two distinct yet interconnected phases - the first focuses on the decades following Independence, when artists used drawing to critically reflect on society, culture, and emerging postcolonial identities. Drawing often functioned as a mnemonic device, a documentary impulse, and a medium for incisive social observation, balancing formal experimentation with engagement in civic and cultural discourse. The second phase shifts to the post liberalisation era of the 1990s - a time marked by rapid economic, social, and visual transformations. Artists responded to these disruptions by extending drawing into new registers, capturing the dislocations and uncertainties of a changing society while experimenting with scale, medium, and conceptual rigor. Across both phases, drawings serve as both an archive of memory and a medium of rupture, accommodating intimacy, satire, and critical reflection, unencumbered by the surplus. Seventeen artists, including Arpita Singh, Mery Borah, C Douglas, K Ramanujam, Bhupen Khakhar, Paritosh Sen, Nikhil Biswas, Jogen Chowdhury, Manish Pushkale, Balaji Ponna, Sambaran Das, and Vivan Sundaram among others demonstrate drawing’s autonomy and resilience as a critical form, capable of reflecting and contesting socio-political change with aesthetic and conceptual subtlety.

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Extraordinary Line

5 October 2025 - 10 January 2026

Exhibitions