‘Belonging’ brings three artistic languages to Nariman Point

At Gallery FPH in Nariman Point, a face drawn from a fleeting Mumbai encounter sits alongside abstract fields of colour and paintings that put animals in recognisably human situations.

‘Belonging’, a group exhibition by Najma Merchant, Lubina Agarwal and Avantika Khanna Pocha, runs from November 1 to 15 at Free Press House. The three artists approach connection, memory and emotional life through markedly different visual languages.

Merchant, who grew up in Bandra and has returned to Mumbai, works in intuitive abstraction, using colour and multi-medium marks to give form to experiences that resist easy description. Agarwal’s acrylic works grow from symbols that first appeared in her reflective practice; some use anthropomorphic imagery to consider power, justice, freedom, technology and the natural world.

Pocha draws on Shimla, Goa and Mumbai, translating the atmosphere of each place into colour, line and form rather than literal landscapes. Faces in her paintings emerge from encounters across Mumbai, becoming fragments of the city’s human landscape.

The exhibition is on view at Gallery FPH, Free Press House, Nariman Point, until November 15.