The Body Speaks explores all facets of human body as a canvas, vessel & a voice

Team L&M

The group show, The Body Speak explores the human body’s ability to convey emotions, stories, and ideas through works that present the body as a canvas, a vessel, and a voice, highlighting its complexities and vulnerabilities.

Participating artists examine the figure as an emotional landscape, aiming to reveal inner worlds through expressive forms or narratives. Further, they have also probe the role of the body in shaping identity, culture, and personal stories, expressing vulnerability as also strength. The body is also used as a metaphor to symbolise the universality of human experiences.

Indu Antony’s Archive of Memories’ is an intimate exploration of the spaces that have cradled her existence, shaped the contours of her identity, and provided a backdrop to the chapters of her life. She navigates this intricate topography of homes, prompting a re-examination of the emotional resonance embedded in the walls that bear witness to our personal narratives. Names they called uses the artist’s own hair, exploring the eve-teasing faced by women. Embroidered words symbolize emotional scars and societal pressures, blurring the lines between form, medium, and message.

Badush Babu’s Silent Stories delves into the experiences arising from the complexities of physical and mental solitude as humans seek solace in nature. The works examine the cyclical nature of decay and growth, navigating the profound spectrum of uncertainty and impermanence as an inevitable part of life. He aims to vividly illustrate how one’s surroundings exert a profound influence during these periods of intense pain, reflecting the individual’s internal struggles. His biomorphic drawings become a metaphor for what the body holds.

In contrast, Deepanjali Shekhar places the female figure, surrounded by botanical elements, at center stage. Each image represents women in their daily lives, their everyday emotions, struggles, and the subtle conflicts they face. Through gestures, postures, and forms, the body speaks: sometimes as a reflection of the self, sometimes in dance as a metaphor for joy, sometimes in stillness or yoga as a meditative state of hope, and at times in moments of self-embrace as a celebration of beauty. Botanical forms are interwoven with the figures, not only as metaphors of daily life but also as carriers of intimate stories.

Isha Sharma explores the human body as an emotional landscape, a vessel that carries memory and personal history. Drawing from old family photographs, she investigates how the body conveys emotions, relationships, and stories across generations. Connecting with photos from one’s own time allows her to transcend the limits of time and space; images become portals to the past, preserving fragments of personal and collective memory. Through nostalgia and storytelling, she seeks to understand how the body, as captured in these photographs, becomes both a witness and a narrator of lived experiences.

Rinku Choudhary celebrates the gentle, ever-shifting rhythm of a woman’s everyday life. She portrays it both as present within the home and observant of it, moving through familiar spaces with awareness, curiosity, and ease. The images overlap and blend to reflect the natural flow of daily moments, where tasks, thoughts, and gestures mingle without strict boundaries. Rather than depicting chaos as disruptive, she explores how she accepts it, adapts to it, and sometimes becomes a joyful part of it. The layered compositions highlight the harmony that can emerge from a busy life, revealing how routine, movement, and spontaneity coexist.

“Across centuries, the body has been celebrated, idealised, scrutinised, abstracted, broken apart, and rebuilt. Yet its mystery remains intact. Even in its simplest forms, a curve of a shoulder, the turn of a neck, it offers an entire universe of emotion,” says the show’s curator Rahul Kumar. “To study the body is to study humanity itself: its contradictions, its tenderness, its complications. In contemporary practice, the body expands further. It becomes political, technological, hybrid, fragmented, or fluid. It becomes a site of questioning – what does it mean to belong? To be seen? To be free?” he adds.

AT: Art Incept, South Point Mall, Gurgaon,
TILL: January 10, 2026