TRADITIONS | TRANSITIONS

GROUP EXHIBITION BY VEENITA CHENDVANKAR, MADAN MEENA AND MAINAZ BANO
27 SEPTEMBER - 25 OCTOBER 2025

KYNKYNY Art Gallery presents a group exhibition that brings together the work of three artists, each showcasing a strong relationship to specific cultural and historical lineages in art making. Coming from varied geographies in India, Madan Meena, Veenita Chendvankar and Mainaz Bano offer viewers an entry into styles, themes, and elements connected with both classical and indigenous forms of expression. While their work may be rooted in longstanding traditions, they continue to look at personal and collective experiences in the present, bringing political, environmental and social commentaries within the purview of their representations. Their distinctive ways of working go beyond narrow definitions or categories, opening up myriad expressive and experimental worldviews.

Drawn together with poetic spatial arrangements, skilled draughtsmanship, and harmonious balance of pictorial elements, the works in the compilation are reflective of quiet intentionality and aesthetic refinement.

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VEENITA CHENDVANKAR


Veenita Chendvankar weaves together essences of classical mythology and everyday experiences within her lyrical compositions. Her work reflects a personalised amalgamation of characteristics inspired from various streams of rural community art including Madhubani, Warli, and Gond, as well as Indian miniatures and classical Buddhist cave paintings. Veenita’s practice revolves around experimentation with colour; working with numerous layers, she produces softly tinted backgrounds against which floating figures are playfully juxtaposed. She celebrates nature in her paintings, inhabiting the dream-like, imaginary landscapes with insects, flora and fauna, hybrid creatures and divine beings. She visualises stories that have relevance beyond the ordinarily perceived world, transcending dimensions of reality.

MADAN MEENA


Madan Meena finds deep meaning in the preservation and revival of folklore and traditional craft practices in his homeland Rajasthan. Hailing from a community once known for its wall-art expertise, Meena uses his ancestral knowledge and academic research in furthering the relevance of disappearing material and intangible heritage. His paintings present a seamless blend of imagery that derives from block printing motifs, vernacular architecture, figures from the Koti-Bundi style of miniature painting, as well as broader references to other cultural expressions from the Marwar region. His compositions demonstrate unusual grouping of motifs, and rhythmic repetitions, with transitions between monochrome and intense colour. Evocative of the beauty of the natural world, his works display a process of abstraction and simplification, an intrinsic quality that exists within indigenous traditions.

MAINAZ BANO


Mainaz Bano is inspired by mundane life and popular culture, as well as the legacies of Mughal miniatures, and the rich visual and built culture of her hometown Lucknow. She often employs objects and figures abstracted from their original backgrounds, and places them in new ones, creating unusual combinations and broken hierarchies. She moves between representations that are deeply personal, like a visual diary, and collective thoughts that render social constructs palpable. Understanding the complexity of contemporary socio-political shifts, she utilises historical figures and traditional motifs in order to create commentaries, adding elements of humour and satire to obscure conventional meanings. Her paintings, in luminous pastel shades, are constructed in sequential formats, with interconnected narratives.

The exhibition draws into focus syncretic forms of expression that have absorbed from various streams of aesthetic practices across time, geographies and cultures, contributing to iconographies that are deeply regional even while they reflect global ideas. The paintings remind one of the constantly evolving nature of artistic languages, that thrive in the intersection of past and present, convention and experimentation, tradition and modernity.

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