In metropolises shaped by complex socio-political interactions, artists use the body–its absence or presence–as sites which map power structures and differences. For these artists, social realities percolate, expressed through small-scale paintings, fragmented figures, and the absurd.

Salik Ansari turns attention to sites under construction, investigating urban structures that conceal human displacement. In Ansari’s work, the subject is implied, encoded through absence. Gopinath Kshetrayium’s paintings, devoid of explicit human references, capture the enduring violence inflicted upon the landscape of Manipur and its resulting impact on the human psyche.

Using the personal as a starting point for collective experiences, Ritesh Ajmeri's works evoke skin, translating personal, bodily interactions with his surroundings. Skin here becomes a surface where memory and time make their mark. In Ritika Sharma’s works, the personal becomes political. Drawing from CCTV stills and crime reportage, Sharma’s work explores the nature of human encounters in public areas under surveillance, where lines between safety and control dissolve.

Siddhartha Kararwal approaches questions of power by merging pop cultural references with satirical commentary on erasures and silences. In similar vein, Jayanta Roy references everyday objects, to create urban landscapes that reveal violence and conflict.

These artistic practices reveal how bodies are shaped and surveilled by the landscapes they inhabit, and concomitantly, how bodies may choose to resist socio-political apparatuses that expect conformity.