Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke returns this season with an incisive exhibition: “Nothing Human Is Alien To Me”, artist Aban Raza’s first solo exhibition in New Delhi, running from 31 October to 15 December 2025. It promises an active artistic engagement with the volatile socio-political landscape of the Indian subcontinent. Aban Raza is known for her portrayal of contemporary reality by presenting a corpus of work that comments on human experience. The paintings invite the viewers to step into an arena where death, dissent, and dignity converge into one. The exhibition unfolds through eight major works that are a ‘startling oscillation’. Her paintings occupy a distinctive spot that can be characterized as a porous distinction between lived violence and political imagination, reflecting the subcontinent’s long history of protest movements while channeling its echo through modern imagery.
A Vocabulary of Resistance and Remembrance
Aban Raza’s practice can be interpreted as part of a lineage of subcontinental artists who document, mourn, and protest through visual imagery. In this exhibition, her works appear to be encapsulating annotations on the psyche of public grief. The figures she paints often appear suspended between existing and erasure. The oscillation reflected in her paintings is not only aesthetic, but highly political. She single-handedly does not ‘glorify’ the protestors; rather, she presents them as individuals possessing vigour, whose bodies are vectors of the imprint of a country negotiating with its own fractures.
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In the artistic sphere, the sensibility of her works resonates with artists like Zainul Abedin, Somnath Hore, and Iqbal Husain, all of whom visualised human suffering without domesticating it. Yet, Raza’s palette is extremely contemporary, as her figures reverberate the pixelated brutality of news feeds, etc.
Raza’s previous solo shows with the gallery, such as ‘Luggage, People and a little space’ (2020) and ‘There is something tremendous about the blue sky’ (2022) in Mumbai, have established her as a vital voice concerned with the “atmospherics of power within the postcolony,” particularly focusing on the repression of rights and the dehumanisation of marginalized groups. Her subjects are often drawn from the labouring classes and those actively claiming their civic rights.
The Art Choices
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Her paintings feel like a deeply felt interpretation of space and body. Death appears not as an event but as a witness. Protest is depicted not as spectacle, but as heartbeat. Her use of colour is the signature element of her paintings. Critics call it a “bright unselfconscious chroma” that is applied to the working-class body, lending a passionate engagement to the scenes. Her focus also ranges beyond public spectacles of protest, as one of the paintings hung in the exhibition depicts a scene of quiet internal mourning. This piece features women in an interior space, resting after preparing a community meal. The description highlights the “pink walls, shiny and overwhelming, loom[ing] and appear[ing] to teeter above the figures,” suggesting a domestic space that is simultaneously confining and tender. The sense of “waiting” expressed through the posture is interpreted as “passivity and dependency”.
Exhimition Details
| Event | Details |
|---|---|
| Title | “Nothing Human Is Alien To Me” (from Terence, popularized by Karl Marx) |
| Artist | Aban Raza |
| Venue | Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke, New Delhi |
| Dates | October 31 — December 15, 2025 |
| Core Theme | The oscillation between scenes of violent death and vital protest movements in the subcontinent. |
| Artistic Style | Use of palpable, proximate imagery, elongated figures, and passionate colour, often referencing German Expressionism. |
| Critical Voice | Gayatri Sinha, emphasizing the links between past protest history and current social media/news images. |
Key Highlights
- Aban Raza’s debut solo in New Delhi marks a significant moment in contemporary political art.
- The eight paintings create an energetic tension between death and dissent.
- Visuals draw from protests, news media, and social memory.
- The exhibition aligns Raza with a lineage of artists depicting human struggle.
- Works encourage slow, deliberate viewing rather than passive consumption.
- The show engages both historical protest movements and current sociopolitical currents.
The Politics of Gaze and the Responsibility of Looking
Raza’s works are constructed for gradual looking. They challenge the viewer to stick to the discomfort between empathy and voyeurism. These days, as images of suffering are consumed with considerable velocity, her canvases slow down the spectator’s comfort to scroll away. The intentional tension between private anguish and public spectacle has long been a subject in South Asian art. What distinguishes her work is her ability to frame the human body as an archive; every figure is an inscription, and every gesture appears to be a footnote to an unauthored political chronicle.
Takeaway
Aban Raza’s exhibition is a necessary confrontation with the current epoch. It nudges, unsettles, and most importantly, confronts the gravity of the human condition with clarity. She upholds some very critical queries, like What do we owe to the images we consume, and what responsibilities do we bear for the truths they contain? Her insightful translation of both the violent end of life and the realities of protests forces the spectators to acknowledge the battles for dignity and existence. This exhibition strengthens Raza’s place as a painter of courage and empathy, whose work promises to resonate long after the final viewing date. It offers a moral encounter. And in that sense, Raza’s debut is not just timely, it is necessary.
