Looking south Dakshinachitra Museum examines crafts and contemporary art in South India

Dakshinachitra Museum will inaugurate ‘Looking Southwards: The Dakshinachitra Vision of Craft, Art, and Cultural Heritage’ at Varija Gallery on January 9, offering a timely reflection on how South India’s craft traditions and modern artistic practices influence, influence, and reshape each other.

Curated by Chennai-based art historian Sruthi Parthasarathy, the exhibition draws attention to Dakshinachitra’s long-term commitment to regional cultural heritage, questioning the traditional division between “fine arts” and traditional crafts. Rather than treating these as separate or hierarchical categories, Looking Southwards places them in active dialogue, highlighting their shared social history and material concerns.

Shruti says, “At its core, the exhibition seeks to historicize Dakshinachitra Museum as an institution, chronicling its sustained commitment to the arts, crafts and visual traditions of South India since its inception in 1996. Over nearly three decades, Dakshinachitra has consciously built a large collection of modern and contemporary art.”

A contemporary artwork from Tamil Nadu is linked to the craft traditions of South India. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

At the heart of the exhibition is Dakshinachitra’s modern and contemporary art collection, developed with a conscious South Indian focus. Works by artists associated with the Madras Art Movement – ​​key figures of the region’s mid-20th century modernism – are displayed alongside a select group of later Indian contemporaries and international artists. These are depicted through interaction with living craft practices, including secular and ritual-voting traditions, revealing the range and vitality of the visual culture of South India. “What is particularly compelling is DakshinaChitra’s continued engagement with artists through its various artist camps and the outputs from them. This long-term nurturing of artistic practice by an independent institution is remarkable,” she explains.

The curator frames the exhibition through a textile metaphor: enduring craft traditions form the warp, while modern and contemporary art forms the weft. Together, they form a single fabric – suggesting that cultural identity is not static, but is constantly woven through continuity and change. Shruti further explains that the exhibition brings together the broad spectrum of craft and artistic traditions of South India, presenting the work of traditional craft practitioners alongside artworks from the Madras Art Movement to contemporary artists from Tamil Nadu and the wider South Indian region. The main attraction is a mid-20th century Yatra temple from Telangana – a box-like structure rich with vibrant traditional paintings and also containing the idol of a goddess. Historically, such shrines were carried by nomadic musicians as they traveled between towns and cities, serving as mobile sites of devotion, performance, and storytelling.

Old Man by Artist Perumal | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The exhibition also showcases tribal art forms such as Gond and Warli, presented not as static or archival traditions, but as living practices that continue to evolve, reacting to contemporary forms, ideas and contexts.

Looking south highlights Dakshina’s vision of dismantling the often rigid distinction between the art and traditional craft practices, treating them not as separate categories but as interconnected modes of creative expression. Within this framework, sculpture, painting, textile weaving and indigenous craft practices are brought together under a shared artistic continuum. As an institution, DakshinaChitra has also played an important role in the preservation and conservation of these diverse artistic traditions of South India, as well as actively ensuring their relevance within the contemporary cultural discourse.

This exhibition promises to be of particular interest to students, researchers and visitors who wish to understand how South India’s artistic past and present are deeply interconnected.

@DakshinaChitra Museum, Muttukadu. Varija Gallery, 10 am to 5 pm. Remains closed on Tuesday. The exhibition will be on view from January 9 to February 15 and again from March 9 to March 30. Phone: 98410 20149