Red colored Travancore House in New Delhi. Red curtains floated from the ceiling and two huge red and gold paintings above the entrance brought the venue to life. Inside, a life-size black and white cutout of a woman glowed, covered with text relating to the gang rape of 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh on December 16, 2012. Artist Shilo Shiv Suleman created it and placed it at a bus stop during the upcoming protests. Now, this was part of art of liberationA show curated by Suleiman, founder of Fearless Collective.
“I started Fearless at India Gate in 2012. I was 21,” she shared. “My career was at a very different place. I was working a lot with art and technology. Then Jyoti Singh Pandey was brutally gang-raped on the streets of Delhi. And I was here at a wedding at that time.”
Suleman came out to protest with his wedding attire. She recalled, “We stood in the streets for days, mourning the death of a 22-year-old girl, talking about all the invisible wounds we carried with us, about violence and gender in India.” “What I saw was more anger, power and magic than I had seen anywhere in the art world. And I felt like I needed to bring what I knew about storytelling, art, alchemy and healing into public spaces.”
Shilo Shiv Suleman
Since then, the Fearless Collective has become an open-source movement of artists who respond beautifully to moments of fear and trauma. Artists have created public installations in 70 communities in over 30 different countries – working with Muslim and Dalit women in India; indigenous communities in Brazil and North America; communities affected by mass violence in Pakistan; Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon; and gay communities in Tunisia and Indonesia.
artists protest
art of liberation Fire was used as a liberating form, allowing us to imagine and shape new worlds. It also mentions Kali, whose name is in it Atharvaveda God of fire as one of the seven flames of fire. Set up like circular Yogini temples, we followed the circular structure and red flame from the work of one artist to another from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Iran.
The show was the culmination of the collective’s work over the past 13 years. Suleman’s work was there The women of Shaheen Bagh are guarding India’s democracy – in which the artist is shown climbing the image of India with messages like ‘Fearless’ and ‘Hum yahan ke hain’ (We are from here).
Shiloh Suleman’s The women of Shaheen Bagh are guarding India’s democracy
Luluwa Lokhandwala, an artist and graphic designer from Pakistan who reimagined Shia symbols Alam As a symbol of defiance and spiritual strength Shia Alam reborn as a phoenix of resilience,
Luluwa Lokhandwala’s Shia Alam reborn as a phoenix of resilience
we met in other rooms Mukkamlung and Yakthung Patrons of Resistancewhere Krishna Joshi from Nepal spoke about indigenous communities protesting displacement and environmental destruction; and Chuu Wai Nyen’s Girls playing with snakes fearlessly in the face of terrorA powerful metaphor for the courage of women facing authoritarianism in Myanmar; among many other artists. All the works were displayed at protest sites in the artists’ countries during times of turmoil, and were woven into large velvet textile panels for the show.
Krishna Joshi’s work
Chuu Wai Nyen’s Girls playing with snakes fearlessly in the face of terror,
“I have been involved with Fearless since 2022, and it has been a deeply transformative journey,” Wai Nyein tells me over email from France, where she now lives. He launched a campaign named ‘Stay for Your Rights’ during the military coup in Myanmar in 2021 and received a 30-year military sentence. He had to be taken out overnight. “As a Burmese artist living in exile, Fearless gave me not only a platform, but also a community – where storytelling, art and resistance merge with care and empathy.” Today, as a fearless ambassador, she continues the approach in her own projects, whether in France or Asia, working with communities to create murals that celebrate unheard voices.
As they grew as an organization, Fearless Collective has transformed into the Fearless Foundation for the Arts, which is in the process of creating a $10 million fund for political art and activism across South Asia. They received a $3 million grant last year from the Waverly Street Foundation, which invests in community-led programs. Equally, Mukherjee will be curating a show at the Venice Biennale in 2026.
work is never done
There are other forms of protest as well as art. Vicky Shahjahan, a resident of Slave Island, Sri Lanka, made political mehendi; Actor and poet Aamir Aziz read his poems, including powerful ones everything will be rememberedSymbol of resistance during the 2019-2020 anti-CAA protests; And Mahi Ji, a tribal rapper from Maharashtra, sang her activist songs.
“A lot of the work was done in a very short period of time and in reaction to what was happening around us,” says Suleman, who creates interactive sculptures in her studio in Jaipur and worked on a series of paintings for Art Mumbai. Avatar“It was placed on the streets, distributed freely and then thrown into the trash. It.” [the show] There was a way to store what we created.”
Afghan photographer Zahra Khodadaddy Twisted debris as testimony to the outcome of the war
It was also the collective’s attempt to elevate protest to high art, as it is very difficult to take political art seriously in India. “We are a street art movement. We work with communities on the streets, from Syrian refugees to transgender sex workers. So for us, the idea of being in a gallery was quite counterintuitive in that sense,” says Maina Mukherjee, the show’s curatorial advisor. “And yet, over the past year, we have been in a huge process of transition from Fearless Collective to Fearless Foundation, and felt like it was time to take over places of power like museums and galleries and bring the magic from the streets.”
I ask but get no answer about the new geopolitical pairings being formed – where the foreign ministers of India and Taliban are getting photographed standing shoulder to shoulder. Fearless Collective has many new mountains to climb. The show is traveling to the Asia Society Museum in New York and to venues in London and Europe.
The author is an expert on South Asian art and culture.
published – October 27, 2025 01:08 PM IST