Everyone—from curator to artist—has a different take on the ironically-titled show, which comes to Mumbai on March 8, at the Coomaraswamy Hall, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum, till March 16. 

“A young artist Ambu Rathwa, got me interested in doing Baroda March. When I went to Baroda,

I found all the other artists so receptive and friendly that a show just materialised,” says Rukshaan Krishna, organiser of the show and collector.

While she is aware of the turmoil that the Faculty of Fine Arts has undergone in the past months, she believes that Baroda is still one of the more egalitarian and interactive institutes. “Faculty members and students are constantly in discussion. The teachers are practicing artists, so that too makes a lot of difference to the way young artists develop. All the artists in Baroda hail from different parts of the country and there is a cosmopolitan atmosphere that has not changed despite the unfortunate events that led up to Shivaji Panikkar’s dismissal,” she says. 

Interestingly, the idea of survival in these troubled times is the basis of artist Atmanand Chauhan’s work. He explores different ways in which humans and other creatures survive. “For humans, ‘survival’ often translates into a fearsome control of nature and violent socio-political conflicts with peoples and cultures that appear alien to our own. We often use the guise of patriotism to carry out debilitating attacks,” says Chauhan. 

A similar dissent is seen in Nirmala Biluka’s work; a Hyderabad-based, Baroda-settled painter, though her approach is far more subtle and cryptic. “My recent work is based on Sufi poems, how I can visually translate them. I am making a conscious effort to follow my own idiom, look at the self through the works of a female in a male-dominated society,” says the 27-year-old.

Does she feel stifled by the current scenario in Baroda? “Yes, artists have to be more careful about what they do, what happened at the faculty of fine arts has affected everyone, even if you’re not still on campus faculty,” says Biluka.

Cherag Patel, however, believes that since his work is centered around wildlife conservation, the diminishing forest reserves and the slow extinction of big cats,it is not really affected by the clamping down of the moral brigade. “I don’t go to the faculty often, but I am aware of the scenario,” says Patel, clearly on the periphery of the storm. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect artists and students not to move on, and since the man in question, Dr Panikkar is incognito, let’s just celebrate the show.