August, New Delhi: The National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru, is proud to present Sacred Matrices, a landmark solo exhibition by renowned contemporary artist Seema Kohli, opening on 26 August 2025 with a formal inaugural event in the NGMA Auditorium at 5:30 pm. The opening
evening will feature a recital by Shruthi Veena Vishwanath (20 minutes), bouquets presented to honorary guests by NGMA, and an inaugural walkthrough of the exhibition led by Seema Kohli and writer-curator Satyajit Dave. Tentative honorary guests include Dr. Sanjeev Kishor Goutam
and representatives from the British Consulate.
A landmark in her artistic journey, Kaal Netra – Sacred Matrices features over 150 works across painting, video, installation, and performance. Spanning 20 transformative years of her expansive 40-year practice, the exhibition delves into the symbolic, feminine, and spiritual grammars embedded in Kohli’s work, exploring the creation of new myths from inherited codes of the sacred and the everyday. Kohli’s richly layered works, often dense tapestries of gold leaf, yantras, goddess forms, and textual inscriptions are not static representations but rituals in motion. Drawing from Indian philosophical traditions, feminist thought, and global mythologies, she composes new stories where bodies, worlds, and histories coalesce. Her protagonists, inspired by Yoginis, Prakriti, and Kundalini energies, are radiant matrices fluid, multiple, and generative. Kohli’s artistic process, immersive, meditative, and ritualistic, transforms the studio into a site of daily sadhana, where each stitch, burn, or gesture is part of a cosmological map.
Rather than treating myth as decorative or illustrative, Kohli approaches it as a cosmological process—a living grammar that offers insight into identity, ecological urgency, and spiritual longing. Her works often echo anthropological and philosophical frameworks such as Tim Ingold’s “meshwork” and Mircea Eliade’s “illud tempus”—a mythic time that collapses past and present into sacred simultaneity. Within this temporal space, her gestures—of painting, gilding, stitching, chanting—become ritual actions that invoke and inscribe feminine energies across thresholds. Her myth-making practice is deeply informed by thinkers including Claude Lévi-Strauss, Carl Jung, Roland Barthes, and Hélène Cixous. As Barthes’ mythologist, Kohli reinterprets inherited symbols to surface hidden truths and reimagine contemporary meaning. Her references to Tantric and Yogic traditions, Bhakti and Sufi poetry, and sacred feminine archetypes form a layered vocabulary that challenges rationalist and linear frameworks. Instead, Kohli proposes myth as a method of seeing—one that is cyclical, embodied, and spiritually potent.
In this pivotal phase of her career, Kohli’s work also engages with community-driven projects such as Khula Asman – Dawakhana, blending ancient practices with contemporary forms to make myth not only visible, but lived. These projects activate her belief in myth as a force of renewal, healing, and cultural memory.
Dates: 26 August – 26 September 2025
Venue: National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru
Address: Manikyavelu Mansion, Palace Road, Vasanth Nagar, Bengaluru
Exhibition Highlights:
● Opening Event | Tuesday, 26 August | 5:30 pm
Recital by Shruti Veena Vishwanath, followed by a walkthrough with Seema Kohli & Satyajit Dave
● Moderated Talk | Friday, 5 September | 5:30 pm
With Suresh Jayaram, Girish Shahane, Jayvir Johar & Seema Kohli
(Followed by Open House Q&A)
● Narrative Performance | Friday, 12 September | 6:00 – 7:15 pm
Performance by Seema Kohli, accompanied by Sahil Vasudeva & Sina Fakhroddin
(Followed by Open House interaction)
● Workshop | Saturday, 13 September
Exploring art as ritual, inviting participants to engage with mythopoeic methods in their own
creative practices (further details to be announced)
● Closing Event – “Feminist Forkings: On Gender and Agency” | Friday, 26 September |
5:00 pm
Moderated talk by Adwait, with Smitha Carriapa, Navtej Johar & Seema Kohli In an era that often flattens myth into nostalgia or exoticism, Mythic Matrices affirms its role as a generative, feminist, and cosmological force. Kohli’s visionary practice invites viewers to step beyond rationality and linear time—into a space where myth is not merely narrative, but an embodied, contemporary method of transformation.
Featuring Image Courtesy: NGMA
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