magazine text block
How does one imagine the future after an absent year? How fraught is the act of anticipating continuities and ruptures as one bears witness to transitions that are uneasy, uneven, and unpredictable?
Stationed between disease and disorder, and denying every uncontested resolution, the future seems caught in limbo, the kind that brings to mind the 19th century British poet and critic Matthew Arnold, who talks of swerving between two worlds, “one dead, the other powerless to be born.”
As we stumble back to a kind of normalcy, we witness firestorms all around the world — sputtering economies, imploding institutions, threatened freedoms.
How does an artist collect oneself to negotiate with a changing world? In the middle of the raging pandemic, which pictures of the present did they hope to preserve and which did they hope to bury deep?
Asia Society India posed these questions, and more, to six renowned artists, all recipients of the Asia Arts Game Changer Award: Vibha Galhotra, Abir Karmakar, Prabhakar Pachpute, Benitha Perciyal, Gulammohammed Sheikh, and Arpita Singh. In response, each artist either created a new work inspired by the questions or submitted an existing piece they felt resonated with the theme.
The result is a moving collection of works that gets to the heart of the difficult questions that an artist chooses to ask in testing times such as these — questions that may address the heart’s unease but also illuminate a path ahead, offering a contract with hope.

Gulammohammed Sheikh
Speechless City, 1975
Original Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Gulammohammed Sheikh
magazine text block
Speechless City was made during The Emergency period of Indian history (1975-77), and portrays the desolation of the urban landscape with a conspicuous absence of human imagery. The “absent year” Abhay Sardesai wrote about recalled that memory strangely replicated in the lockdown year under the impact of COVID-19. I offered this piece because it seemed to express the inexpressible muteness that humanity experienced that year.
— Gulammohammed Sheikh

Vibha Galhotra
In ... Times, 2020
Original Medium: Performative staged photo-work
Vibha Galhotra
magazine text block
In ... Times is a series of staged/performative photographic works conceived in response to the unimaginable period brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The coerced social distancing norms in fear of contracting the virus have massively changed the world order, questioning the very meaning of what was previously considered normal.
— Vibha Galhotra

Prabhakar Pachpute
A plight of hardship, 2020
Original Medium: Watercolor and pencil on paper
Prabhakar Pachpute
magazine text block
I chose this work as my response to the most uncertain time of the past year. Fear and chaotic surroundings have made us more vulnerable towards our present and future. Our day-to-day activity has slowed down and limited our actions. We are stuck, and at the same time protected by the walls of our houses. But what about those who don’t have these walls? A Plight of Hardship tries to talk about these concerns, the injustice that resides in society, a society that we still inhabit.
— Prabhakar Pachpute

Abir Karmakar
Self-portrait (as COVID positive), 2021
Original Medium: Graphite, erasure, and fixative on paper
Abir Karmakar
magazine text block
For research, while going through the visual materials on COVID published in various local newspapers — and at the same time being COVID positive — a thought occurs: the possibility that I myself would turn into the very images I was looking at.
— Abir Karmakar

Arpita Singh
Home, 2020
Original Medium: Watercolor on paper
Arpita Singh
magazine text block
I don’t think there should be a special reason [to select a work]. All my works are usual, and all my works are important, as well. Like one walks — every step is usual, and every step is special, too. But perhaps, given the theme of 'The Absent Year' and the fact that it was linked to the idea of “home,” I felt this particular work resonated, or perhaps I felt this was a somewhat different work from my others.
— Arpita Singh

Benitha Perciyal
There Is No Place To Go, 2021
Original Medium: Catechu on recycled paper
Benitha Perciyal
magazine highlight
To commemorate the fifth Asia Arts Game Changer Awards India, Asia Society India produced a series of limited-edition portfolios featuring signed reproductions by the artists.
Conceptualized by Abhay Sardesai, editor of ARTIndia magazine, and designed by Reeya Mehta, founder of The Experimental Box, the portfolio is themed around The Absent Year and poignantly presents a marker and memory of the past year through a collection of artworks that negotiate a changing world.
A portion of the proceeds supports Creative Dignity, an organization dedicated to providing COVID-19 relief and rehabilitation to Indian artisans.