Mirror Man, Mirror Me, Part 1: Watercolours 2014-2025 by Shibu Natesan
Visual practitioners are typically known to transition from academic art values to contemporary genres of abstract, mixed and digital media. But artist Shibu Natesan (b. 1966) has reversed this trajectory. Much of his earlier practice was defined by photorealistic paintings, metallic paints and glossy finishes. The works drew references from pop culture, Latin American cinema and German Expressionism, which he discovered while studying Painting at the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, and later Printmaking for his Masters at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda. These paintings became his response to the turbulent political climate of Kerala in the 1980s.
In recent years, Natesan, who lives between London, Trivandrum and Vadodara, has taken recourse to the traditional medium of watercolour, as evident in his latest solo exhibition, Mirror Man, Mirror Me, Part 1: Watercolours 2014-2025, at Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi. His largest display of watercolours till date engage with how the “mirror” as a concept and motif has appeared in global art since the European Renaissance, elucidating vanitas (vanity/death) and veritas (truth). Literature and art provide instances of mirroring and reflection in the Greek myths of Medusa and Narcissus, Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” Michelangelo Pistoletto’s mirror paintings, Jeff Koons’ balloon sculptures, Anish Kapoor’s “Sky Mirror” and “Cloud Gate” installations, and Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room” immersive art.
Natesan’s cache of works, however, move away from such art historical narratives and his own earlier allegorical mode. He adopts the plein-air method, associated with the Impressionists, who painted the outdoors in fleeting sunlight and the chromatic shifts left in its wake. These works articulate his flaneur sensibility and introverted nature, attuned to locating quiet landscapes or spaces when momentarily deserted. If he brings in people and objects, it is those that made him pause and reflect in the past 11 years.
Fragmented memories from a trip to Bukhara appear as isolated souks and ancient pale-walled structures under mid-day light. Views of rooftops, cottages cradled in foliage, and lakes from his hometown in Kerala reflect his quiet meanderings. Vintage clocks and dolls suggest a collector’s sensibility, while portraits of a folk singer from Uzbekistan, a Baul musician from Santiniketan, and Ramana Maharishi, indicate his spiritual interactions. In the absence of detailed captioning or in-depth catalogue guidance, works such as “Ophelia (After Millais)” leave much room for interpretation by viewers, including contemporary associations with Taylor Swift’s 2025 single “The Fate of Ophelia.”
Natesan also turns inwards with 42 self-portraits, all dated 2025. These seem near identical, marked by the same side profile and poker-faced gaze, with only minor shifts in hairstyle, or the presence of a hat or scarf. In contrast to the loose brushwork of the other displays, this series is sharply rendered, with the painter accentuating individual hair strands and even the reflections on his spectacle lens. The treatment is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s sustained engagement with self-portraiture to document his ageing. Like the Dutch master, Natesan relied on mirrors, installing them in his study, as noted in the curatorial essay by Parul Dave Mukerji.
Natesan’s turn to watercolours in an era shaped by AI may seem unexpected, yet he adopts the medium with assurance, distancing himself from the long-critiqued legacy of imitative realism, and sustaining a sense of inner peace.
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Cartography of Identity: Multiplicity as a Method at Apparao Galleries
Three rows of zebras crossing over a circular formation of chairs and chappals in an “Untitled” (2025) Sanjeeva Rao Guthi watercolour on acid work offers multiple readings. The scene may evoke crosswalks as quiet agents of pedestrian safety; the idea of moving across thresholds in pursuit of new futures, whether through migration or personal transition; or the cycle of ambition and political manoeuvres involved in attaining and retaining the seat of power.
Guthi’s work is part of a group show, Cartography of Identity, presented by Apparao Galleries at Bikaner House and organized around the line of inquiry: “How do we locate ourselves within the vastness of space and thought?” Curated by Sharan Apparao, the exhibition positions artworks as “maps,” drawing on cartographic ideas involving grids, coordinates, geometry and mathematics. The premise suggested is that a single geographic region can yield divergent narratives, when its rivers, mountains and trade routes are mapped separately, and its people, while inhabiting the same place, will carry distinct life stories shaped by religion, family memory and language. It also harps on the understanding that individual thought produces its own universe, while collective thought shapes a shared cosmos.
Displayed Artworks
Sharan selects works in which connections to the theme (of homeland, borders and displacement) surface only when read within the framework of the exhibition. Sachin George Sebastian presents two of his 2D sculptures in acid paper, with dense thickets of interwoven flora and fauna. Rm. Palaniappan brings together his interests in geometry, science, astronomy, mathematics and the World Wars in nine reworked digital prints, titled Berlin/e Effect/Chapter II (2000), which revolve around a photograph of the Reichstag. In the absence of detailed captions, Palaniappan’s ninth print offers the desired artist’s voice, recording his view that metaphysics lies at the “core” of art, that abstraction operates as “energy,” and that drawing is “a journey into unknown space.” Smriti Dixit juxtaposes maps of erstwhile Bombay and the Andamans with assemblages of found anthropological waste from these sites. Chantal Jumel’s pin-pierced paper from her Tamil Geometry series recalls stencil guides used in creating repetitive kolam patterns -- the ritual floor drawings she studies.
Political concerns in some works, like Guthi’s, open possibilities for interpretations shaped by spatial and geometric interventions. “The Place Remembers its People” by activist-artist Orijit Sen is a print of one segment of the original 20x75 metre mural. It offers a drone view of rural Punjab and a peek into the region’s varied personal and public activities, including protests. Gautam Bhatia presents “The City of Yom” on yellow tracing paper used by architects. The work acts a socio-cultural critique as it stages an archaeologicalexcavation of a fictional site inhabited by only the wealthy, where they are permitted to store their assetsunderground.
Genesis of the Theme
The exhibition title reflects Sharan’s long engagement with cartographic visualizations, cosmic observation and the metaphysical. She recalls the gallery receiving a number of “beautifully illustrated British maps,” and adds, “I [have] noticed an increasing number of contemporary artists use maps in their works. Over time, I began to register links between the cosmos, mathematics, geometry and cartography, recognizing that everything is connected.” A short course in astronomy introduced her to shlokas in early Indian texts that encode the speed of light, and outline numeration systems and celestial methods for reading the stars. That also helped Sharan further “connect maps with the identity of a place and its energy from an abstract perspective.”
The current show feels like a natural fit within a gallery programme that has previously included Cosmic Duality (2024), which examined the human position in the universe through purusha-prakriti philosophy; The Circle and the Square (2024), which traced points of contact across practices concerned with spatial dynamics and the relation between presence and perception; and Craft, Design & Art Intervention/Ed-Two “Infinity”: Continuity Interwoven (2022), which invited design practitioners to innovate upon Indian craft objects through the principle of infinity.
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Mukherjee: Benode, Leela and Mrinalini at Vadehra Art Gallery
Conceptualized as a parallel to A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (on till February 24, 2026), the Delhi exhibition Mukherjee (Benodebehari, Leela and Mrinalini) is on view at Vadehra Art Gallery (D-40). Rather than display each artist in a separate segment and area, the curation intersperses the works of all three throughout the first and second floors, placing them in conversation with each other. Redolent of contemporary art families such as the Dodiyas (Atul, Anju and Biraaj) and the Parekhs (Manu, Madhvi and Manisha), the presentation shows how a shared environment can still give rise to individual artistic vocabularies.
The show opens with a grouping of Mrinalini Mukherjee’s metal sculptures near the entrance. Their folded silhouettes and hybrid organic forms reveal her interest in the transformation potential of materials. The Delhi edition, however, differs from the Royal Academy’s foregrounding of Mrinalini’s iconic fibre sculptures. In London, her mammoth woven works, often linked to female genitalia, have been installed as dramatic, immersive experiences with a strong physical presence. Their absence in Delhi can deflate viewer expectations, as these works have become synonymous with her practice. But her lesser-known bronze and metal creations have their own merit, highlighting weight, surface and structure over the expansive sensuousness that define her hemp fibre pieces. These works from the last years of her life, signify a more grounded and focused sculptural evolution.
Across the walls on both floors, Benodebehari Mukherjee’s watercolours and drawings appear alongside his wife Leela’s prints. They reflect his distinctive approach to landscape, shaped by his partial blindness and deep attachment to Santiniketan, Nepal and Mussoorie. Instead of rendering scenery in a descriptive manner, his compositions register rhythms of the natural world, which seem to hover between presence and memory. In the exhibition, they introduce a contemplative counterpoint to the denser sculptural works.
Within the space of sculpture, we also see interventions by Leela. Her carved, seemingly totemic human and boxy animal figures reflect her Santiniketan grounding and her collaboration with woodcarvers in Nepal. Touted as the first woman modernist sculptor in India, each of her pieces emphasize posture and balance, smooth finish and defined ridges. Her prints expand the scope of her practice, drawing from classical, folk, Indic and African imagery. While Benodebehari and Mrinalini’s oeuvres have been celebrated within the art world for long, it is good to see Leela get her equal due through new scholarship and discoveries and displays of her practice in recent years.
Mirror Man, Mirror Me was on at Art Alive Gallery from October 8 to November 20, 2025; Cartography of Identity: Multiplicity as a Method at Bikaner House from November 7 to 17, 2025; and Mukherjee: Benode, Leela and Mrinalini from November 7 to 29, 2025, at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.