Madras Art Weekend (MAW) – Landscapes of Belonging: Exhibition of 100 Artists Reimagining Home, Identity, and Belonging in Chennai | A Contemporary Art Exhibition Showcasing Painting, Photography, Mixed Media, Ceramics, Sculpture, and Digital Art at Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai – Exploring the Stories, Memories, and Deep-Rooted Sense of Place That Define the City
– a curtain-raiser to madras day, bringing artists together to explore what it means to call chennai home
| CasualWalker’s Rating for Madras Art Weekend’s Landscapes of Belonging Art Exhibition : | |
9.9 – Deeply, Thoughtfully Curated |
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As a prelude to the annual Madras Day and Madras Month celebrations, Madras Art Weekend, Tab Infinity, and The Hindu’s Made of Chennai came together to present Landscapes of Belonging, a curated group exhibition at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai. The show captures the stories, memories, and deep-rooted sense of place that define the city, bringing together the works of 100 emerging and established artists across painting, photography, mixed media, ceramics, sculpture, and digital art. Together, these works offer a rich diversity of perspectives on heritage, culture, and evolving identity. Whether you’re an art enthusiast, a collector, or simply curious, the exhibition invites you to explore what it truly means to belong.
Madras Art Weekend has, over the years, built a reputation for turning Chennai’s cultural calendar into something more than an annual ritual, it treats the city itself as a living canvas. This exhibition ties directly into Madras Day and Madras Month, the beloved August tradition that honors Chennai’s founding and its layered, centuries-old identity.
Landscapes of Belonging: Purpose and Meaning
This art exhibition is about the emotional architecture of home, the idea that home can be a temple you pass every day, a person who makes you feel safe, a childhood memory, or even a quiet internal landscape you carry within yourself.
Through the lens of identity, heritage, and memory, the artists featured explore how people connect with the places they inhabit. Some works are deeply personal and autobiographical. Others draw on collective cultural memory, the temples, ponds, paddy fields, and coastlines that have shaped generations of Tamil Nadu’s artistic imagination. Together, they build a mosaic where no single definition of “home” dominates.
Key Highlights Works at the Show
Chess legend Viswanathan Anand’s son, Sai Akhil Anand, showcased his artwork Pattinam and Pakkam, drawing on the concept of Thinai from Sangam literature, with Neithal representing the coastal habitat. His work also features the endangered Dugong, highlighting the special marine centre set up near Rameswaram to protect it, along with the Olive Ridley turtle that visits the shores every year. More significantly, his pieces explore the Turing Patterns visible in coral reefs, drawing a parallel with the kolam, which he sees as a pattern that connects the dots within this fragile habitat.
In the same exhibition, actor and filmmaker Suhasini Maniratnam makes her debut in digital art, drawing inspiration from Besant Nagar, the Shore Temple, and the Parthasarathy Temple, landmarks she has walked past for years. She notes that there are things people see every day but rarely register, and that her aim is simply to help people notice what is around them.
Artist P Saravanan’s canvases pulse with blues, ochres, and reds, often featuring animals as symbols of companionship, one piece shows a man with a parrot reading tarot cards, another captures the raw energy of a Jallikattu scene, and a third depicts a little girl cradling her cat with quiet tenderness.
Neena Makhija’s brightly coloured paintings explore the inner lives of women navigating solitude and companionship within the same four walls, reflecting what she describes as the tension between connection and isolation in contemporary life. Chennai-born ceramic artist Monika Umapathy works with tactile, textured surfaces to preserve everyday observations of the city, merging material and memory in ways that painting alone cannot achieve.
Journalist and artist Narayan Lakshman finds inspiration in Chennai’s beaches and morning light, shaping an artistic philosophy influenced by Zen Buddhism, one where everything is fleeting, yet everything embraces you.
The late artist T Athiveerapandian’s landscapes, rich with mountains and trees, are also part of the show; his wife, Susan Athi, recalls that even a single tree held ten or fifteen shades of green for him. Artist NS Manoharan, raised in Kumbakonam, paints temple streets, village ponds, and paddy fields from memory, aiming to document a rural way of life that is slowly disappearing.
Sudha Rajendran’s acrylic work portrays a young girl and an elephant sharing a quiet moment, symbolising empathy and coexistence between humans and nature, rounding off an exhibition that, across its many artists, weaves together themes of ecology, memory, identity, and the quiet beauty of everyday life in Chennai and beyond.
Significance and Cultural Impact of the Exhibition
As we commonly say, that Chennai city welcomes and embraces everyone who arrives. The exhibition’s central installation and photo booth bring this saying to life, using vibrant colors to represent the many communities, cultures, and people who call Chennai home, set against an iconic skyline backdrop.
This is more than decoration, it is a visual argument for inclusivity. In a city that has absorbed migrants, students, artists, and families from across India and beyond, “Landscapes of Belonging” positions art as a shared language that transcends background, caste, income, or origin. It reflects the broader Madras Day and Madras Month spirit: honoring not just Chennai’s history, but its living, evolving identity.
What Makes This Exhibition Different
Unlike many gallery shows that spotlight a handful of established names, this exhibition features 100 emerging and established artists, spanning visual art, photography, mixed media, ceramics, and digital art. That scale alone makes it one of the most ambitious community art projects Chennai has seen in recent years.
The diversity of mediums means visitors experience “home” through multiple senses, the tactile roughness of ceramic, the stillness of a photograph, the motion implied in a painted brushstroke, and the immersive scale of installation art. Whether you are an art collector, a student, or simply someone curious about Chennai’s cultural pulse, the show offers an accessible entry point into contemporary Tamil Nadu art without requiring any prior expertise.
What stays with you after walking through “Landscapes of Belonging” is not one single image, but the accumulation of them, a temple here, a childhood pond there, a woman’s quiet gesture, an elephant’s trust. Home, this exhibition insists, is never just an address. It is memory, relationship, and feeling, stitched together across a hundred different artistic voices.
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