Both Italy and India have this long history of the very old as well as the very new,” says Myna Mukherjee, cultural producer and curator, who along with producer and curator Davide Quadrio, is behind the documentary film SAMA: Symbols and Gestures in Contemporary Art of Italy and India, VOL. I, which had a red-carpet preview at the Italian Embassy grounds last month.

Indian and South Asian art often occupies a static, exotified space in the international forum, feels Mukherjee, restricted into exclusive categories like classical or spiritual. “I always say that there is no one story to be said about India. If someone wants to engage with a civilisation that’s this old and has so many epicentres for culture, they have to be willing to embrace its complexity.” Working with Quadrio, who has substantial experience with Asian cultures, having worked in China for 25 years, Mukherjee who has lived in the US for over two decades says there was trust, as “both of us had lived outside our respective countries and faced a kind of representational glitch from opposite ends of the spectrum.”