At first glance, Raj Kishore Gupta’s Indigenous Accents, which opened yesterday on 2nd July 2026 at LTC, Bikaner House, appears to celebrate the visual languages of indigenous cultures from India and beyond. A closer reading, however, reveals a more personal inquiry—one that examines how memory, landscape and material can become repositories of cultural experience without slipping into imitation.

Aboriginal Medium – Wood, Acrylic, resin Size – 37” x 22”

Curated by Uma Nair, the exhibition brings together works conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period when the Chandigarh-based artist immersed himself in the study of indigenous artistic traditions including Warli, Gond, Phulkari, Pahadi, African and Australian Aboriginal art. Rather than appropriating these visual vocabularies, Gupta identifies a common thread running through them: an enduring relationship between communities and the land they inhabit.

That understanding becomes the conceptual foundation of Indigenous Accents. Butterflies, flowering plants, birds, animals, trees and geometric forms recur across the exhibition, not as ethnographic references but as fragments of personal and collective memory. Gupta’s compositions are layered and densely populated, encouraging the viewer to move across their surfaces in much the same way one reads a landscape—discovering narratives gradually rather than through a single focal point.

The exhibition’s strongest contribution lies in its material experimentation. Gupta works extensively with live-edge sheesham and kikar wood, preserving natural contours, bark, knots and fissures instead of treating them as imperfections to be removed. In doing so, the support becomes inseparable from the image. The grain of the timber dictates movement, cracks interrupt symmetry, and the history embedded within the tree remains visible long after it has entered the gallery.

‘Untitled’ Wood, Acrylic, Resin 18” x 32”

The result is work that occupies an intriguing space between painting, relief and sculpture. Rather than imposing complete artistic control over the surface, Gupta allows the material to participate in the act of image-making. It is a collaborative process in which the wood retains its own agency, giving the works an organic rhythm that resists the polished uniformity often associated with contemporary painting.

This sensitivity to surface is perhaps unsurprising given Gupta’s training as a printmaker at the Government College of Art, Chandigarh. His early engagement with woodcuts and linocuts continues to resonate through intricate line work, repeated motifs and carefully structured compositions. While the medium has evolved, the discipline of printmaking—its emphasis on precision, layering and the expressive potential of line—remains evident throughout the exhibition.

Among the most compelling works are a series of vertical wooden beams that extend Gupta’s visual language into sculptural form. Layered with motifs accumulated through years of research, these pieces evoke totems or mnemonic objects without belonging to any single cultural tradition. Instead, they suggest how artistic ideas migrate across geographies, acquiring new meanings while retaining traces of their origins.

‘Untitled’ Wood, Acrylic, Resin 50” x 15”

Gupta himself describes the exhibition as an unexpected return to his own beginnings. During his research into indigenous art, he came to recognise that these traditions were fundamentally expressions of place. “I found that the paintings of all the tribals were about their soil, their land and their traditions,” he observes. “They paint what they love and what they feel.” That realisation prompted memories of his childhood, family and the landscapes of Himachal Pradesh to enter the work, transforming a study of indigenous art into an exploration of personal identity.

Uma Nair’s curatorial approach reinforces this dialogue between material and memory. By foregrounding Gupta’s use of live-edge wood, she positions the works within a broader conversation about imperfection, time and the physical histories carried by natural materials. Rather than concealing age or weathering, the exhibition allows these qualities to become integral to its aesthetic language.

The Medley series encapsulates this approach. Bringing together references gathered over years of observation, the works resist categorisation within any one artistic tradition. Instead, they function as conversations between cultures, materials and histories, demonstrating how visual languages can coexist without dissolving into pastiche.

‘Untitled’ Wood, Acrylic, Resin 18” x 15”

The exhibition is further complemented by a series of portraits by photographer Avani Rai, whose images offer an intimate counterpoint to the artworks by documenting the artist behind the practice.

Born in Kasauli in 1957 and based in Chandigarh, Raj Kishore Gupta has spent more than four decades exploring the relationship between material, process and storytelling. Indigenous Accents not only reflects the maturity of that practice but also inaugurates the Raj Kishore Gupta Foundation, established by his daughter Aashita Gupta to support artistic exchange across generations.

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