TAKE on Art Magazine | Contemporary South Asian Art & Culture Publication

Review

A Symbol of Rebuilding, Renewal and Reimagining: Chobi Mela Returns

By Rebecca Anne Proctor

The South Asian country of Bangladesh is in the throes of political change. In July 2024, commonly called the July Revolution, a student, Gen Z-led, pro-democracy mass movement resulted in ousting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Review

Where Archives Breathe: Self-Narration and Oceanic Memory in AUTOPOIESIS

By Oorja Garg

The exhibition stages a structural intervention within a region long shaped by layered violences and oceanic crossings, treating the body as a relational field. Mahbubani, whose great-grandparents were forced to migrate from Sindh following Partition, places her own body within this terrain.

Review

Sujata Bajaj on the cosmos to explore infinity of deep space

By Archana Khare-Ghose

A sky full of twinkling stars is perhaps one of the earliest fascinations of human race. It is not difficult to imagine the first men, women, and children—who appeared approximately 3 million years ago—looking up in wonder with the setting of the sun and beginning to see guiding lights in the sky.

Review

Mapping a Memory

By Satyam Yadav

Arpita Singh, A Feminine Tale, 1995. Copyright: Arpita-Singh, Image Credit: Justin Piperge. A distinctly chalky pink predominates Arpita Singh’s canvases. Sometimes it appears in wreaths of flowers blooming in unbeckoned corners of the canvas, or in candy-floss-like clouds dotted over a bustling Delhi.

Review

A Symbol of Rebuilding, Renewal and Reimagining: Chobi Mela Returns

By Rebecca Anne Proctor

Review

Where Archives Breathe: Self-Narration and Oceanic Memory in AUTOPOIESIS

By Oorja Garg

Review

Sujata Bajaj on the cosmos to explore infinity of deep space

By Archana Khare-Ghose

Review

Mapping a Memory

By Satyam Yadav

Miniature

TAKE Miniature turns its attention to one of South Asia’s most enduring yet continually evolving artistic traditions: miniature painting as a language of intimacy, precision, memory, and exchange. Moving beyond the idea of miniature as simply a question of scale, this issue traces how artists have carried, adapted, questioned, and transformed its inherited vocabularies across centuries. From Buddhist and Jain manuscripts to Mughal, Rajput, Pahari, Deccan and regional traditions, miniature has always been shaped by movement, encounter, patronage, and cultural exchange. Bringing together artists, writers, curators and practitioners, the issue considers how tradition can remain alive without becoming static. In doing so, TAKE Miniature explores the form’s contemporary possibilities, where technique, politics, memory, identity, ecology, and personal narratives converge, revealing miniature as an expansive field of artistic dialogue rather than a fixed historical category.

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Inside Miniature

Editor’s Note

My Name is Red

The Dilemma of the Single-Hair Miniaturists and the Sourcing of Traditional Brushes

Exoticism Twice: The Political Life of Contemporary Miniature Whose Revival is it? Exoticism and the Contemporary Miniature Canon

Kangra Painting and Imperial Ambition Formation of a Court Language in the Reign of Sansar ChandKangra Painting and Imperial Ambition Formation of a Court Language in the Reign ofKangra Painting and Imperial Ambition Formation of a Court Language in the Reign of Sansar Chand Sansar Chand

At the Confluence of Tirtha and Yatra Vision and Sacred Geography in the Kanchana Chitra Ramayana

Warp and Weft The Bikaner Art of Mahaveer Swami

The Cloud Messenger Yugal Kishore Sharma’s Meghdootam at the Art Institute of Chicago

The Chinnamasta Image in Art Goddesses, Death and Nurturance

Following the Footsteps of Manaku Reimagining the Divine in the Musavvari of Murad Khan Mumtaz

Dreams, Demons, and Desires The Art of Waseem Ahmed

Issanama The Life of Jesus from an Eastern Perspective

Samudra Mathana Churning of the Ocean of Milk

Anindita Bhattacharya: The Illuminated Margin

Personal Mythologies

Udaipur: A Forgotten Art Hub

Gopa Trivedi: The Meticulous Storyteller

The Influential Four From Mastery to Creativity

When East Meets West Reinterpreting Indian Miniature Painting Traditions

Art Muscle

Miniature as Video The Times Square Installation of Eeman Masood

Deeper than Blood On Carmine, and Other Reds

Muraqqa Section

Echoes of Ephemera: A Review of Party is Elsewhere

Flying in Each-Others Orbit

Wanderers after Ghostly Concrete

Sharp objects: The Last Rust by Archana Hande

On Unequal Burdens: Waste and Toxicity in Navjot Altaf’s New Works

Witnessing the Insignificant: Reba Hore’s Modernism of Attention

At the Limits of Human Lives: Archiving on a Minor Note

The Body of the Thing

How Bitter Language Has Become: On Shilpa Gupta’s we last met in the mirror

Narratives yet to unfold - at 40 we are still Young!

Flora Indica: Recovering Lost Stories from Kew’s Indian Gardens

Liquid Bodies.Dissident Borders

Inhabiting Contradiction Reflections from a Curator’s Forum

Moving Together Tropical Choreographies at the Curators’ Hub

TAKE on Art: Art Writers’ Award 2025

The Arts Family: Building a Global Community for Contemporary South Asian Art

Art Alive Gallery: A Brush with History

Raghu Rai

Fly on the Wall

TAKE Features

Review

Amphibian Aesthetics: Lens to Hyphenated Identity

By Dilpreet Bhullar

Not a celebratory idea of nature’s unique benevolence, i.e., the amphibian, but a nudge to the human tribe to recognise and acknowledge the abyss of apocalypses it has entailed in the face of unchecked urban development. The hyphenated identity of an amphibian, which can live on land as well as in water, within the realm of the exhibition, epitomises the catastrophe humans have waged on the Earth, only to break its existence rooted in harmony with nature. To mention, Amphibian Aesthetics marks the first exhibition presented at Ishara House, initiated by the Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai. The exhibition, alongside the Kochi Muziris Biennale, is organised in partnership with Aazhi Archives: a collective of artists, writers, scholars and researchers engaged in collaborative studies of Kerala’s maritime past and its changing artistic cultures.

Uncategorized

Writing the Subjective/Reading the Collective

By Sudeshna Rana

Blog

(Re)imagining the Image

By Sudeshna Rana

Blog

Art Encounters of the Third Kind

By Sudeshna Rana

Blog

Fleeting time, Floating world

By Sudeshna Rana

Critical Writing in Collaboration Workshop

- Curating a Dream Project

Piramal Art Foundation, Lower Parel, Mumbai

Issue 21 Launch

Take Fiction

Representing Geographical and Cultural Diversity in the large-scale International Exhibitions

17th April 2025
HUNA LOUNGE, Art Dubai

Art Writers’ Award 2024

14 April–14 June 2025
Villa Sträuli, Winterthur, Switzerland

Launch of TAKE Philanthropy

October 23, 2024
The Quorum, Gurgaon

Launch of Body/Language by Ranjana Dave, winner of AWA 22

12th April 2024
LATITUDE 28

Take Editions

Unique, limited editioned and handcrafted affordable artworks by eminent artists exclusively commissioned for TAKE on Art.

Manu Parekh

Untitled, Acrylic on Canson paper in the form of a paper-pulp book cast sculpture, 11 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches, Untitled by Manu Parekh, 2025

Not Available

Manu Parekh

Untitled, Acrylic on Canson paper in the form of a paper-pulp book cast sculpture, 11 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches, Untitled by Manu Parekh, 2025

Available

Manu Parekh

Untitled, Acrylic on Canson paper in the form of a paper-pulp book cast sculpture, 11 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches, Untitled by Manu Parekh, 2025

Not Available

Manu Parekh

Untitled, Acrylic on Canson paper in the form of a paper-pulp book cast sculpture, 11 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches, Untitled by Manu Parekh, 2025

Available

Manu Parekh

Untitled, Acrylic on Canson paper in the form of a paper-pulp book cast sculpture, 11 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches, Untitled by Manu Parekh, 2025

Available