Located in South Mumbai, Chemould Prescott Road and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke are about ten minutes apart. Both galleries are currently displaying exhibitions by women artists with two very different styles. However, one thematic thread that ties them together is their exploration of an individual’s relationship with their immediate environment.
At Chemould Prescott Road, Anju Dodiya’s paintings and collages are presented in The Geometry of Ash. Consisting of charcoal and watercolours on paper or fabric board, along with a single oil on canvas, the works reveal her skill at building worlds within worlds. She creates divisions within paintings using fabric and colour, providing viewers with a keen sense of layered spaces.
The fabrics, selected before she knows what she wants to use them for, vary. One such sample, featured in “The Green Book,” looks almost like terrazzo tiles, textured and fragmented. Here, the collaging recreates the insides of a home and enhances the illusion of walking from one area to another. Dodiya elaborates: “The girls are reading as if in one room, and you might pass a corridor and go into another room. And that fabric is almost illustrative. It’s just like tile. The fun of it is that I’ve observed at least three people who have…actually gone and touched that [painting].”
In “Paper Storm--II,” Dodiya plays with the ideas of calm and volatility. She inserts a strip of a French toile de jouy, a fabric commonly used in European indoor upholstery and decor. Its gentle charm and connotations of cosy domesticity is but a ploy to bring out the volatility of the panel that follows, which conveys complete disarray through flying paper and figures clinging onto a tree for dear life.
As in Dodiya’s older work, we see the motif of the pencil reappear. It signifies the artist’s ability to speak or control expression. The strength of the pencil as a tool becomes especially apparent in the painting, “Cave of Muteness,” where a girl shoves pencils down the throat of another, reminding the viewer of the pressures of censorship and the frustration of not being able to say what you want to.
The pencil, according to Dodiya, symbolizes the possibility of articulation. It is not simply the act of speaking or creating, but the very ability to express oneself. She refers to the pencil as a weapon as well, and one can see why in her painting, ”The Painter,” in which a girl stands with her arms drawn up above her head such that most of her face is covered (except for her eyes), holding two pencils. In this painting, the pencils look almost as though they are spearheaded tools, ready to be launched, or to be used to stab someone.
Whereas Dodiya’s work centres on the experience of personhood and the body in relation to its environment, Durvasula’s abstractions turn to the relationship between objects and space, engaging with a non-living lifeworld. Her latest exhibition, Abstracts, at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, curated by her long-time collaborator Grant Watson, features paintings in watercolour and gouache, sheets with graphic notations, and objects, found and transformed. The works are marked by a distinct lack of human figures.
Referring to some Durvasula’s monochrome paintings, Watson mentions that it is not so much the narrative of the paintings themselves, but the processes behind their making that is most intriguing for him. The works may seem simple, but there is a complexity and precision behind each decision and creation. Durvasula elaborates on this, mentioning how she starts off with an idea for a painting, and then whittles it down to a version where all narrative has been carved out of it. What remains, then, is pure abstraction.
She takes the example of a sculpture of Buddha, which she used as a reference for a painting in 1988. Initially, she wanted to paint the sculpture, but after peeling off various layers and elements, she ended up with a white triangle on a blue background. This total abstraction is how she builds her monochrome paintings.
There is always something more than meets the eye when it comes to the objects Durvasula displays in this exhibition. Some of them are small and seemingly unassuming, yet transformed by virtue of being part of a bigger line-up. Durvasula’s focus is on “giving an ordinary, everyday (at times discarded) object a sense of importance.” Recalling something Watson said of her processes and selection, she adds that no matter where an object comes from, the artist gives them new dignity and meaning by turning them into elements for viewership. [1]
There are no written labels on the walls that accompany Dodiya’s and Durvasula’s exhibits. This means that there are no easy contexts provided to viewers. But it also challenges them or offers them the freedom to make sense of the pieces on their own.
In a way, this mirrors what Abstracts is about -- making meaning from what you find around you. Take, for example, “PS6, Untitled (La Pietà),” a sculpture made from crushed plastic bottles, gesso and an earthenware base, with one bottle standing upright, the other horizontal, lodged into the first’s middle. The tongue-in-cheek title, borrowed from Michelangelo’s iconic marble sculpture of Jesus and Mary, might prompt a laugh, but only if you dig deeper into the title. The abstraction of the original structure into something so far removed from the source establishes both a rupture and a link between the referent and the symbol.
Durvasula performs similar acts of connection and distortion through other abstractions, sometimes with a broken rear-view mirror from her car, or with a blade of grass, rotating. Each object, in its barest form, becomes an inextricable, integral part of the system or world it inhabits.
Artistic distortions are beautiful; but the changes rapidly taking over the living natural world are distressing. These are referred to in the introduction to The Geometry of Ash, where Anish Gawande, National Spokesperson for the Nationalist Congress Party, writes about the champa trees outside Dodiya’s studio, which have not bloomed this year. Dodiya is equally concerned about ecological and human degradation as evident in the titular piece of her show.
In “The Geometry of Ash,” a woman stands next to a shape drawn in charcoal. There is a split down the middle of the painting, but the woman gestures to the right, where there lies a pile of bodies, Dodiya’s reference to the killings in Gaza. She mentions that there is no way one can talk about climate change, global warming and the destruction of the earth without thinking of the violence being wreaked by war in Palestine. She mentions the helplessness one feels, sitting at home, unable to change things. “We’re talking about global warming. And then we talk about using less plastic. And then the next thing we read is that 75 die in just three minutes…The whole thing is absurd.”
It is this absurdity which prompts the artist to create, and to attempt to make legible the act of empathy. It is not a simple task, but it seems incumbent upon us (now more than ever) to make note of what empathy might look like, be it in how we relate to each other, or to the champa trees, or to the objects we find on our way. Through these two exhibitions, not only is the viewer made to contend with the world they must participate in, but are left to question how exactly they might build a better kind of world for themselves and others.
The Geometry of Ash is on view at Chemould Prescott Road from October 31 to December 26, 2025; and Abstracts at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, from October 26 to December 27, 2025.
Mekhala Singhal is a Mumbai-based writer and artist, with a background in sociology, politics and the arts.
Notes
[1] Nicola Durvasula, “Nicola Durvasula in conversation with Grant Watson | Abstracts, 2025,” video uploaded on YouTube by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, November 4, 2025.