Hyderabad’s visual arts calendar turns to India’s heartland this week as Gond artist Japani Shyam brings The Living Bond to Alliance Française Hyderabad (AFH). Featuring 14 works and running through September 27, the show marks her first exhibition in the city and underscores a growing appetite for indigenous art forms within Telangana’s cultural ecosystem.
An artist shaped by lineage and landscape Japani Shyam was born and raised in Bhopal and grew up within the creative orbit of her father, the late Jangarh Singh Shyam, a pioneering figure who helped bring Gond art to national and international attention. Her early immersion—watching him paint deities, forests, birds, and animals while narrating folktales—became the foundation of her practice. By age 11 she had earned a Kamaladevi Award, a recognition that encouraged her to develop a personal language rather than rely solely on inherited motifs.
That language is anchored in restraint. Shyam has refined a two-color approach—often black and white, or a pairing of dark and light tones—that heightens contrast, clarifies form, and draws attention to linework and pattern. The result is a visual economy where composition and detail carry emotional and narrative weight without the distraction of a broad color spectrum.
Nature at the core The exhibition’s title reflects an ethos long embedded in Gond communities: humanity’s continuous, lived bond with nature. Shyam’s travels to her ancestral village of Patangarh in Madhya Pradesh, typically twice a year, rekindle the rhythms and textures of the forest. The quiet of walking under trees, the presence of animals, and the chorus of birds inform her imagery, alongside community customs that tie life-cycle rituals to the natural world.
In the works on view, forests, animals, and birds are not scenic backdrops but active agents. Patterns—fine hatching, rhythmic dots, and flowing lines—evoke growth rings, bark textures, feathers, and water currents. Mythic narratives and folktale fragments appear to surface within these organic structures, suggesting that stories and ecosystems are intertwined rather than separate domains.
Women’s lives, contemporary concerns The Living Bond also places women’s experiences in conversation with tradition. While grounded in a centuries-old art form, Shyam’s canvases engage with present-day realities—ambitions shaped by social expectations, and the constraints and possibilities of everyday life. Rather than overt didacticism, these concerns emerge through metaphor: protective trees, vigilant birds, and intertwined creatures hint at care, solidarity, and resilience. The two-tone palette intensifies these readings, allowing silhouettes and negative space to carry psychological nuance.
Technique: pattern, memory, and discipline Shyam’s decision to limit color channels her focus into the micro-architecture of patterns—densely woven marks that hold the surfaces together. The discipline reflects a learned apprenticeship as well as an independent stance: a preference for clarity over chromatic flourish. The resulting compositions are calm yet dynamic, inviting slow looking and rewarding close attention to detail. Memory, too, is a technical element here, whether in recalling her father’s stories at the drawing board or revisiting the sensory vocabulary of the forest during studio work.
Hyderabad’s evolving arts ecosystem For Hyderabad, the exhibition aligns with a broader broadening of the city’s cultural offer, where institutions and galleries increasingly juxtapose global contemporary practices with indigenous forms. AFH, known for cross-cultural programming, provides a platform where tribal art can meet urban audiences, including students, designers, and collectors seeking context alongside craft. Presenting Gond art in this setting encourages dialogue around sustainability, heritage, and representation without isolating the work as purely ethnographic or purely commercial.
Exhibition highlights - Title and venue: The Living Bond at Alliance Française Hyderabad - Duration: Through September 27 - Works on view: 14 - Signature approach: A two-color palette—usually black/white or paired tonal contrasts - Motifs and sources: Forests, trees, birds, animals, folktales, and myths - Personal and social themes: Women’s experiences and contemporary life within a traditional visual language - Lineage and recognition: Daughter of artist Jangarh Singh Shyam; won a Kamaladevi Award in childhood that catalyzed her independent style - Place and practice: Regular visits to Patangarh reconnect the artist to the landscapes and customs that inform her imagery
Context: Gond art’s living tradition Gond art, rooted in central India, has historically animated domestic spaces and community rituals through depictions of flora, fauna, and ancestral narratives. Over recent decades, it has transitioned from walls and floors to paper and canvas, gaining visibility in museums, galleries, and festivals. Artists like Shyam continue this movement by adapting motifs and methods to contemporary contexts while preserving the genre’s storytelling core and environmental consciousness.
Why it matters - Cultural bridge: Bringing Gond art into a mainstream urban venue broadens who sees the work and how it is understood, connecting Telangana’s audiences to central Indian narratives and aesthetics. - Heritage and innovation: The show demonstrates how a traditional form can reflect current social questions—especially around women’s identities—without losing its roots. - Sustainability and attention: In a rapidly urbanizing region, art centered on ecological interdependence invites reflection on resource use, conservation, and community knowledge.
What’s next The Living Bond closes on September 27. The strong reception to indigenous art in Hyderabad suggests more institutions may program exhibitions that blend tradition and contemporary concerns, creating opportunities for artists from India’s diverse regions to engage new publics and for audiences to encounter living craft lineages beyond textbook histories.