November 15 , 2025
01:30 PM - 02:30 PM
Aditya Birla Auditorium | On-Site
In the heart of Bombay’s cultural renaissance, the Bhulabhai Desai Memorial Institute (BDMI) stood as a living experiment in artistic cross-pollination. It was here that the modern Indian art movement took root, where Gaitonde, Husain, Padamsee, and Nasreen Mohamedi painted in neighboring studios, where Gallery 59 showcased the Bombay Progressives, and where artists worked not in isolation but in dialogue with dancers, musicians, and theatre-makers. BDMI nurtured an ecosystem defined by permeability, trust, and creative generosity. This panel with creative practitioners, reflects on that legacy to ask: What might a 21st-century Bhulabhai look like? In a world shaped by rising costs, digital dissemination, and institutional gatekeeping, how can artists and cultural practitioners reimagine spaces of shared production and collaboration? What enables radical experimentation across disciplines and generations? And how can such a legacy be carried forward as a model for the future?
Anahita Uberoi is an actor, director and producer who has worked extensively in New York, Mumbai and Germany over the last 33 years . Anahita grew up in a family of theatre and film personalities. She spent large amounts of her childhood backstage where she learnt about the magic as well as the rigour of the performing arts. She trained at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York and went on to work as an assistant director on fifteen productions, both On Broadway as well as Off Broadway. She also worked as an assistant director to her mother, Padmashree Vijaya Mehta for the German production of Naga Mandala in Leipzig and Weimar. She has performed in and directed over thirty critically acclaimed productions spanning four decades and has conducted theatre workshops for adults, children as well as corporate houses in Mumbai, and other cities across India. She was a creative consultant for BookMyShow and focussed on developing the theatre department. She was the Creative learning Director of Connections India – a youth theatre festival in association with the National Theatre in the UK which provided performing arts training by renowned theatre companies, directors and actors.
Owais Husain’s work explores identity, iconography, and urban mythology and its evolution from one generation to the next, illustrating his relationship with and abstraction of a more traditional Indian aesthetic. Whimsical references can be seen in his series To Speak is to Disappear, 2009, a set of delicate ink drawings on handmade Khadi paper of figures trying to communicate and connect to each other to no avail. In the painting, Sympathy vs. Empathy, 2014, a young boy and a Bengal tiger confront each other face to face, the boy appropriates the identity of the tiger with a mask while the tiger’s own face is hidden from the viewer. More complex and abstract are Husain’s Heart of Silence, 2015, a multi-media installation comprised of video, large suspended paper houses, light and reflection, and My Body, A Fleet of Ships, 2014, in which acrylic panels densely layered with photographic images and paintings surround fragments of terracotta figures. Both installations also incorporate poetry into the mixture of visual elements. Using film, photography, painting, sculpture, installation and poetry - in various combinations or on their own - Husain creates visually textured works that both reference his roots in a traditional Indian figurative style and embody his constant pursuit to evolve and contemporize that iconography.
Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and independent curator. His recent collections of poetry include Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press, 2023). Hoskote has been a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa; associate fellow of Sarai-CSDS at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi; writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich, and the Polish Institute, Berlin; and researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011) and was co-curator, with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, of the 7th Gwangju Biennale. He has served on the Jury of the Venice Biennale (2015), is a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Bergen Assembly, Norway, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Public Arts Trust of India (PATI) and on the Editorial Board of the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press. Hoskote is one of the six inaugural Fellows of the Georgetown Global Dialogues program, established in 2024 by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
Reema Desai Gehi is the Editor of ART India. She has previously written for the Mumbai Mirror, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and India Today. An alumna of Cardiff University (UK), Reema completed her Master’s with a special focus on arts journalism. In 2024, she authored her debut book, The Catalyst: Rudolf von Leyden and India's Artistic Awakening, which was published in English by Speaking Tiger. The book was translated into German and published by Draupadi Verlag.
