The 5 Indian Artists You Need To Know

Evaluating excellence in contemporary art isn't easy. Once upon a simpler time, you had painting, you had sculpture, and Michelangelo was the one guy that could really do both. In 2015, things are a bit more complicated. But whether it's a multi-channel video artist or a prolific ballpoint-pen doodler, Indias got some pretty serious players currently doing the rounds on the global circuit, with styles as varied as the Subcontinent itself. The commonality? They kick ass all over the place.

- Arundhati Das

Vidha Saumya

Born In Patna, 31

Since her 2011 debut at Mumbai’s Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, this Lahore-trained artist has used black, red and blue Cello Gripper ballpoint pens on Chinese rice paper to illustrate a world of excess through tight glimpses of clustered bodies in the midst of erotic revelry. Her forthcoming, limited-edition book, Gunpowder, featuring 30 new black-and-white drawings, pursues similar individuals in psychedelic domestic settings, decaying in the absence of readily available pleasure. And red and blue pens.

Hemali Bhuta

Born In Mumbai, 36

As interior designer, artist, and recently curator, what unites Hemali Bhuta’s disciplines is the exploration of the overlooked. At the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2012, Bhuta installed bronze sculptures modelled on roots amid the grass. They were made in such a way that viewers could miss them, or not, depending on their individual attention to detail.

Her manipulation of materials like agarbattis and soap introduces both play and deception: A slab of alum, for example, titled Folded Line, resembles concrete – perhaps because it’s the latter we’re more familiar with than the former. And as we wrestle with our assumptions, Bhuta keeps making the ordinary extraordinary.

Asim Waqif

Born In Hyderabad, 37