Visual Arts- Ashoka University

01/12/2025

We invite you to Visual Storytelling at AJAYABGHAR: HOUSE OF STORIES

Everyone loves a good story. Since the beginning of time, cultures all over the world have been using pictures to tell stories. From caveman paintings to now in the world of Instagram, visual stories have the power to connect through their ability to elicit emotion and action, both with or without words.

Using drawings, texts, photographs and design, the students have extended themselves to create comics, posters, zines, installations and animations to articulate diverse visual stories emerging from their worlds.

📍Where? LR 008–009, AC 02
🗓 When? 1st & 2nd December 2025

Please drop in, read, engage and inspire 🎭

16/11/2025

28/09/2025

In our Visual Arts Colloquium series, this Tuesday, September 30th, 2025, we are excited to host eminent author and publisher Urvashi Butalia, storyteller who will be taking us through
ARCHIVING SOLIDARITIES
Poster Women: A Visual History of the Women's Movement in India

Building on a journey of collecting and archiving feminist posters created across India, the talk will engage with the collective processes of putting together such an archive, establishing ownership, thinking of access and discussing important issues of collective image making, access and ownership.
Some original posters will also be put on display at the venue. Do not miss this!
Venue: Visual Arts Studio (near sports block)
Time: 4.00 pm

21/09/2025

In our Visual Arts Colloquium series, this Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025, we are excited to host Delhi-based mixed-media artist, storyteller, and writer Siddhesh Gautam () who will be talking about
The Art Side of Ambedkarism: Visual Resistance, Memory, and Imagination
Venue: Visual Arts Studio (near sports block)
Time: 1.30 pm

Abstract: This talk reflects on how Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s thought and vision inspire an ongoing visual vocabulary of resistance. I will explore how Ambedkarism has shaped not only the politics of social justice but also an aesthetic language of equality, dignity, and collective imagination. Through my practice of illustration, graphic storytelling, and public art, I will discuss how images can work as archives of people’s struggles, as acts of pedagogy, and as tools to dismantle caste hierarchies in everyday life. The session will also highlight how the anti-caste movement's legacy continues to guide creative practices that are not limited to elitist spaces, but rooted in the communities that live and sustain his vision.

Bio:
Siddhesh Gautam (he/them) is a Delhi-based mixed-media artist, storyteller, and writer. His work explores caste, history, identity, and resistance, drawing on visual archives and personal memory to challenge dominant narratives. Through illustrations, poetry, and storytelling, he documents the struggles and dreams of marginalized communities. His practice seeks to return art to the people, grounding it in everyday lives rather than elitist spaces.

05/05/2025

Dear All,
The Department of Visual Arts cordially invites you to
Be-longing
ISM Exhibition by Muskaan Singhvi and Anshika Batnagar
On View Today, May5 at 11am - 5pm
(Tea and Snacks will be served 3pm onwards today)

25/11/2024

The DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL ARTS 

in collaboration with CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN GENDER AND SEXUALITY   

cordially invites you to the fifth colloquium in VISUAL ARTS COLLOQUIUM SERIES '24-25 

Date- November 26, 2024 (Tuesday) 

Time: 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM

Venue: AC 03-309     

        

Title: DESIRED WOMEN, WOMEN’S DESIRES: 

Pleasures in Early Indian Art

Speaker: Prof. Seema Bawa

 

Abstract:

Women are objects of desire in both the visual and textual traditions and as such are frequently represented in the early Indian art. Scenes of intimacy, dance, and music, feasting and drinking that valorise pleasure and its agents are displayed on pillars, doorways and entrances of stūpas, vihāras and other sacred buildings and also on small terracotta plaques at Mathurā, Kausambi, Chandraketugarh and many othersites. The gendered nature of the discourse of pleasure is predicated on who produces, provides patronage for and finally consumes such sculptures and texts. 

 

The centrality of women to creating and participating in somatic pleasures and aiding it as being objects of leisure is centered on the idea unrestrained, beautiful, young, amorous women who are, flirtatious, clever at flattery and the like. The most desired and feminine category of women were ganikas or courtesans and yavanikas, and women associated with wine, given the view that women and wine make a heady combination epitomizing, licentiousness, eroticism, attractiveness and temptation. The world of beauty, desire and leisure in sculptural art, though theagency of women and couples, is created within the imagined urban spaces of palaces, gardens and balconies. The contexts of pleasures for males and females are distinct and deeply gendered; even though the object of pleasure is the female body, the consumer through prescription or proscription is often male.

The discourse of female pleasure and desire is difficult to extract, given the relativesilence in most sources though one can infer from negative references that these were domestic and intimate.

 

About the Speaker: Seema Bawa is a Professor specializing in History of South Asian Art and Culture at Department of History, University of Delhi. Bo

18/11/2024

The DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL ARTS    

cordially invites you to the fourth colloquium in the VISUAL ARTS COLLOQUIUM SERIES '24-25  

Date- November 19, 2024 (Tuesday)    

Time: 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM 

Venue: AC04-409

12/11/2024