Sangam Peshawaria. Photo by Praveen Mahto

Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj, Shushma Bahl, Biman B. Das, Anoop Kamath and Sangam Peshawaria.

Art does not perform miracles; rather, it awakens consciousness. Whatever an artist creates is a reimagination and reconstruction of their visual and conceptual experiences. Sangam Peshawaria’s solo exhibition Slow Realisation opened on 23 May 2026 at the Triveni Gallery of Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi. This is her first solo exhibition.

Her works had previously been seen in a few group exhibitions. Using pencil and graphite powder on paper, she creates monochromatic black-and-white images. Technically, these may be called drawings, yet they are essentially paintings because they focus less on lines, as drawings generally do, and more on texture and tonal variation.

Her works depict the human body and everyday objects, but while the forms remain realistic, the emotions and ideas are equally abstract and open-ended. In her art, the human body mostly appears only in fragments. In particular, feet and hands recur frequently in her works, and through their gestures alone they seem to say everything.

Besides these, her compositions contain scattered utensils, shoes, clothes, and many such objects that are part of ordinary domestic experience. A certain disorder commonly found within homes brings to Sangam a distinct aesthetic sensibility. In the disarray created by her daughter’s casually placed belongings, she discovered a different kind of artistic quality. This was her visual experience, which inspired her to reorganise these elements artistically in order to create a new emotional world.

If one observes these works closely, the disorder of objects appears somewhere to symbolically express the disorderliness of contemporary life itself. In truth, art never speaks entirely on its own; rather, it creates an environment in which viewers may speak and experience for themselves.

Sangam Peshawaria’s works demonstrate how even figurative forms can become abstract within art. The varied tonalities she achieves while working with graphite lend deeper meaning to her compositions.

Sangam Peshawaria with her daughter and a friend.

Among the exhibited works, one image depicts only the lower portions of the bodies of three individuals, yet each figure differs in tonal treatment. The work also creates the illusion that all three might actually be the same person existing in different states and psychological conditions; on the other hand, they may also be interpreted as representing some form of class-based sociological structure. Bodily gestures constitute an important aspect of her work, through which she communicates her ideas. Unlike many other artists, she does not rely on the human face to express emotions and thoughts.

Minute detailing, especially when focusing on a single part of the body, has become one of the defining characteristics of her art. This subtlety exists not only in scale but also in the rendering of the form itself. While constructing each figure, Sangam pays attention to the smallest details. By observing the effects of light upon the body and the marks of age upon the skin, she opens up the possibility of larger narratives through delicate details.

Anoop Kamath, Sangam, Biman B. Das and Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj.

This artistic approach of fragmentary representation of the human body combined with meticulous subtlety prevents her works from becoming overtly narrative in form. Shoes, clothes, and other objects are present here, yet they do not belong to any explicit storyline; rather, they function like openings toward imaginative narratives moving in multiple directions. Holding onto these openings, viewers may search for meanings and experiences of their own. This is why her works, though figurative, may also be described as abstract.

Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj, Ritu Kamath, Meetu Kapoor, Anoop Kamath, Sangam Peshawaria and Praveen Mahto.

-By Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj

Photo’s by Jafar Khan and Praveen Mahto