India Re-Worlded: Seventy Artists Reimagine a Nation at Gallery Odyssey

Curator Arshiya Lokhandwala organized 'India Re-Worlded: Seventy Years of Investigating a Nation' at Gallery Odyssey in Mumbai from 11 September 2017 to 21 February 2018, marking India's 70th independence anniversary. The exhibition invited seventy artists to each select a year from 1947 onward that held personal or historical significance, producing works that collectively interrogated postcolonial identity, violence, and resistance. Lokhandwala's curatorial framework drew on Gayatri Spivak's concept of 'worlding' and her own terms 'de-worlding' and 're-worlding' as strategies against epistemic violence. The show juxtaposed modern masters—including F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, M.F. Husain, Krishen Khanna, Tyeb Mehta, V.S. Gaitonde, Somnath Hore, and Jeram Patel—with contemporary artists such as Jitish Kallat, Bose Krishnamachari, Shilpa Gupta, Surekha, Anita Dube, and Riyas Komu. Kallat's 'Death of Distance' (2006) opened the exhibition, contrasting a news story of a girl's suicide over a one-rupee school meal with a telecom tariff announcement. Dube's 'Missing Since 1992' memorialized the Babri Masjid demolition. The non-chronological, dialogic display disrupted single narratives, presenting counter-histories through subaltern voices and imagined geographies. Lokhandwala described the show as a postcolonial critique and affirmation of India's self-determination, building on her earlier exhibition 'After Midnight' at the Queens Museum in New York (2015).