Art News India

Quartz Collective: Conversations in Strength and Sensitivity

Shikha Gupta, Gitanjali Kashyap, Nitasha Jaini, Ritu Aggarwal and Ritu Singh

Throughout history, women have relied on collective action to secure their rights, education, and representation within systems that have often marginalized their contributions. In the arts, women’s collectives have served as spaces of solidarity, resistance, and creative empowerment, challenging established narratives while creating opportunities for new voices and perspectives to emerge.

Nitasha Jaini’s painting.

The Quartz Collective is one such initiative. Bringing together a group of women artists connected through parallel journeys of artistic inquiry and expression, the collective marks its debut with a compelling first exhibition, ‘Parallels of Perception’, a group show by The Quartz Collective at  Triveni Kala Sangam’s Shridharani Gallery from 8 to 15 June 2026. Curated by Georgina Maddox, the show gathers Nitasha Jaini, Gitanjali Kashyap, Ritu Aggarwal, Ritu Singh Panday and Shikha Gupta. Works range from figuration to linear abstraction, optical effects, tactile mixed media and collaborative scrolls.

Painting by Gitanjali Kashyap

While each artist possesses a distinct visual language, together they present a rich dialogue on identity, urban existence, spirituality, transformation, and healing.

In this exhibition, Nitasha Jaini explores the pressures and paradoxes of contemporary masculinity. The recurring male figures in her work—dressed in suits, carrying briefcases, and perpetually ascending staircases—embody the burdens of corporate life and patriarchal expectations. Rather than simply critiquing male authority, Jaini reveals the emotional costs of a social framework that compels men to suppress vulnerability and individuality. Drawing inspiration from Delhi’s urban landscape, she employs metaphors of ambition, competition, and confinement to examine a metropolitan existence where the appearance of success often obscures a deeper loss of meaning. The relentless pursuit of progress, unfulfilled aspirations, and the emotional numbness bred by competition emerge as recurring themes. This conceptual inquiry extends into her material practice, where laser-cut MDF structures create artificial environments that mirror the rigid systems within which contemporary human existence is negotiated.

Painting by Ritu Aggarwal.

In contrast, Gitanjali Kashyap’s meditative abstractions invite viewers into a space of introspection. Working with a restrained vocabulary of line, light, shadow, and geometry, she creates compositions that oscillate between stillness and movement. Influenced by minimalist abstraction and the legacy of artists such as Nasreen Mohamedi, Kashyap explores perception, spirituality, and inner resilience. Her works evoke optical depth and sacred geometry, drawing viewers into layered visual fields that encourage contemplation and transcendence. Recent works inspired by the devotional practice of Ram Naam Lekhan further deepen this spiritual dimension, transforming repetitive mark-making into an act of faith, discipline, and reflection.

Geometry also lies at the heart of Ritu Aggarwal’s practice, though her approach is distinctly playful and architectural. Through hard-edged abstraction, shifting perspectives, and carefully orchestrated optical illusions, she deconstructs familiar urban forms and reimagines them as dynamic visual experiences. Staircases, archways, facades, and structural grids become sites of silent negotiation between order and disorientation. Her experimentation with textiles, stitching, and mixed media introduces tactile depth to compositions that challenge conventional perceptions of space and structure. Drawing upon decades of international artistic engagement, Aggarwal’s work sustains a sophisticated dialogue between architecture, abstraction, and visual perception.

Painting by Ritu Singh.

Ritu Singh Pandey’s work is shaped by an acute awareness of both visible and invisible worlds, encompassing physical landscapes, emotional states, and environmental change. Her richly textured paintings draw inspiration from geological and cosmic phenomena—ice, magma, oceans, planets, smoke, and snow. Through layered surfaces and vibrant colour, she explores the tensions between creation and destruction, yearning and surrender, stability and upheaval. Her works resonate simultaneously with the forces of nature and the complexities of human emotion. While celebrating the transformative power of natural processes, she also reflects on ecological imbalance and humanity’s impact on the environment. By combining intuitive experimentation with scientific observation, Singh creates compelling visual metaphors that connect geological and cosmic structures with the emotional terrain of lived experience.

Painting by Shikha Gupta.

Shikha Gupta’s practice centres on materiality, memory, and social engagement. Trained in both fine arts and art therapy, she employs abstraction as a vehicle for emotional expression and personal transformation. Her collaborative scroll projects with historically marginalized communities underscore the healing potential of creative practice. Through the use of found objects, text, and subtle colour palettes, she helps bring forward voices and histories that have long remained unheard. In her individual works, emerging semicircular forms and gentle chromatic transitions become symbols of vital energy, liberation, and the transcendence of imposed boundaries. Her practice reflects a deep commitment to art as a process of healing, connection, and empowerment.

Together, the artists of the Quartz Collective offer a nuanced exploration of contemporary life through diverse artistic languages. Whether examining urban identity, spiritual contemplation, environmental transformation, or collective healing, their works are united by a compelling balance of sensitivity and strength. The exhibition ultimately stands as a testament to the power of women artists working together—creating conversations that are quiet yet profound, intimate yet universal, and resonant long after the viewer has left the gallery.

-By Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj