27 September,2026 08:02 AM IST | Mumbai | Debjani Paul
(Left and right) Shadows of Peace by Masood Hussain
It's been a few years since Thamshangpha âMerci' Maku moved out of Manipur, but home is what he sees in mind's eye when he sits with crayon to paper in his studio in Baroda. And it is through his eye that the viewer gets a glimpse into Manipur's past and present, so much of which still remains invisible to mainland India, despite the conflict-ridden state being on the news for the past few years.
But this invisibility of the Northeastern state goes far beyond the last three years of violence. "Outsiders probably think that Manipur has been seeing conflict for three or four years. But we have memories and trauma from war stretching back decades - community conflicts, wars between the British, Americans, Japanese, World War I and II⦠So this horror and anxiety is deeply embedded in our stories, words, and art," he says.
This trauma, passed down through generations, shows up in unexpected ways. One of his recent works, Don't Die Starving, is literally based on "words passed down from my parents and, before that, her parents". The artwork features a series of drawings and traditional Manipuri recipes pencilled onto 35 ceramic plates with cane stitching, along with a Manipuri cookbook that Merci is still working on.
The title of the work comes from childhood warnings from his mother to eat quickly, "because there could be an attack at any time, and if he died hungry, his spirit would starve too". "Dinnertime for us is around 5 or 6 in the evening for the same reason - we don't eat late in the night," he says.
The artwork is an extension of an interactive art performance he had done during a Goan residency in 2023, cooking the same Manipuri dishes for everyone and sharing the memories attached to the food. There was an instant connection in the audience, he recalls. "Sometimes where language struggles to convey one's reality to others, art does it so simply and yet profoundly," he says.
Don't Die Starving is one of the works currently on display at Merci's first solo exhibition, Phanstasms in the Hold, at Anant Art Gallery in New Delhi. Like the title suggests, the exhibition is full of dark spectres or what Merci calls "ghosts" of Manipur's hidden history and pain. That anxiety comes through particularly in his crayon etchings on paper, such as a piece titled Shia Krao, which depicts dark figures with limbs in chaotic positions, very clearly signalling peril. This artwork harks back to tales his father would tell of the ghosts of army men hiding in the trees - folklore dating back to the Japanese invasion of Manipur during World War II. "Shia Krao is a practice of appeasing spirits - they can be good or bad - with offerings or rituals. Villagers put a pole outside the village and make their offerings there so the spirit is contained there," he says.
Art, says Merci, is how he can make others "see who he is, where comes from, and how he and other Manipuris live".
Across the world, artists have turned to the visual mediums to make inconvenient truths more palatable for social discourse, from Banksy's graffiti on Palestine, to Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain's paintings on unrest in Kashmir.
Closer home in Mumbai, the queer community has been grieving the passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, which has snatched their right to self-identification of gender, subjecting them to humiliating inspections by a medical board and the government for legal recognition. The amendment was passed despite sustained protests by the trans and non-binary communities, and extensive media coverage of the controversy. And yet, the movement found surprisingly little support among cis-het folk and even among the larger LGBTQIA+ community.
Perhaps that's because people tend to "other" anyone different from them, putting more weight in the difference rather than the ways we are all alike. That is where art can help, says queer activist and art critic-curator Georgina Maddox, who curated Beyond the Binary, an art exhibition at Colaba's Apre Art House last month, featuring works by 11 queer artists. The August showcase was one of the few exhibitions in the country to respond directly to the Trans Act amendment.
"This exhibition really celebrated the body and the togetherness of people who are non-binary. They want to tell people that gender is something which is constructed, and desire is something which doesn't necessarily acknowledge this construction," Maddox says.
But when protests, media coverage, and even social media debates have failed to some extent, can art succeed in making the invisible struggles of marginalised people more visible to society? "Art offers a way to imagine someone else's life and perspective - something that might not even be visible to you otherwise. Sometimes it's an image of a tender moment, sometimes it's someone's fantasy - it gives you a window to an idea one may not have had the language or vocabulary for before," Maddox tells us.
Its chief weapon is to disarm the viewer. "Art appeals to the senses first, and then your mind starts processing and intellectualising it," she stresses, "Words, on the other hand, require your intellect from the get-go, and it's all too easy to slip into over-intellectualisation and resistance to anything new. Art is more open to interpretation, so it's easier to see yourself in the story and relate to it."
"This way, we make more allies. We need more voices to join the fight, and for that, we need the mainstream to understand us better. But where an essay might bore the non-marginalised, and a protest might provoke them, art can disarm and open the doors to their hearts," she adds. While some of the art in the exhibition is loud and proud in its queer identity, many of the images are more subtle in their messaging - a faceless couple holding hands; one man gazing at another at a monument. As Maddox says, "It's love, and who can't relate to that?"
For many, the paper leak protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi was the first time they were exposed to pellet guns, allegedly used against the protestors. And yet, Kashmiri youths have been living with this reality for decades. This pain - that the rest of the country has long shut out - is reflected in art by renowned Kashmiri artist Masood Hussain.
As peace in the Valley deteriorated amid clashes between insurgents and the armed forces, Hussain has responded with art. In 2016, after several youths were blinded by pellet guns used to quell protests over militant Burhan Wani, he created a black-and-white series of images depicting blinded children. "I had visited the hospital and seen a lot of children with pellet injuries; I couldn't bear it. This digital art series expressed my resentment against this violence," says Hussain, an alumnus of the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai.
The series, particularly an image of a child carrying blinded dolls, went viral. "In any other scenario, a child with a doll is a happy image," says Hussain, who is now working on a series depicting Kashmir's history. Artists in Kashmir in particular have paid for their outspokenness, at times shunned by galleries across the country because their work is themed on conflict, which is "not easy to sell". And yet, many like Hussain carry on, because they believe art is meant to help people. "Art conveys the most primitive and profound feelings: hope, pain, violence. And human beings react to those emotions. My art, too, reflects the reality in Kashmir, both the hope and the pain."
Khursheed Ali and Nasir Hassan brought this same pain from Kashmir to New Delhi in 2024 with protest art depicting the erasure of Kashmir's history of conflict and death. They use red ink and white shrouds to evoke death. They also draw attention to the unexplained disappearance of scores of young men amid the government's crackdown on militancy.
"How else can we convey our suffering? How can we get people to hear us?" say the artiste duo.
"Art cannot legislate freedom, but it can change the way we see the person standing in front of us," says Prerna SM Jain, founder and director of Apre Art House. "That shift in perception can be profound. Throughout history, art has shaped how we understand power, identity and society. Mughal portraiture constructed and reinforced the authority of the emperor; Raja Ravi Varma transformed Indian visual culture by bringing mythological imagery into homes across the country; Soviet posters turned ideology into mass visual language; and Picasso's Guernica became an enduring symbol of the violence of war. Artists have also used this power to resist, from political movements to Gran Fury and ACT UP, where art and graphic design became tools of queer activism⦠Art does not simply reflect its time. It can shape what we see, remember and question. It can make visible experiences that have been overlooked and create a starting point for difficult conversations."
