In the 1970s, otherness — the recognition of the other as a distinct being, carrying a culture, ideas, or experiences different from one's own — was at the centre of the concerns of Indian artists and intellectuals. In 1982, the Bharat Bhavan was inaugurated in Bhopal, the first museum to present in a single venue artists from the subcontinent's major art schools alongside those from folk and tribal cultures. The ‘India’ exhibition at the Palace of the Dukes of Cadaval is part of this school of thought and brings together more than 20 contemporary Indian artists from diverse cultural backgrounds.

This exhibition notably brings together the works on paper of Acharya Vyakul — ‘Vyakul’ means ‘the excited one’ in Sanskrit; the anonymous paintings of Tantric families blur the lines between abstraction and meditation; the works of Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe reveal the roots of their animist cultures; those of Sosa Joseph and Siji Krishnan highlight the omnipresence of female artists in both folk and contemporary arts across this vast subcontinent; the large portraits of Parag Sonarghare evoke hyperrealism and the painters of Bollywood billboards; and finally, among the works of other artists presented at the Palace of the Dukes of Cadaval, the art of T. Venkanna celebrates, through eroticism, the activity of the universe, sometimes considered a gigantic divine copulation, as Octavio Paz suggests in his book ‘In Light of India’.

India continues to surprise us with its thrilling capacity to simultaneously offer the best of contemporary arts stemming from dominant and minority, global and local, urban and rural cultures.