Act of Republic: Naresh Kumar
Neither freedom nor belonging is straightforward. One cannot exist entirely without risking the other. Naresh Kumar, who has lived a life of constant migration, understands this tension intimately. He was born in Patna and has lived in Sitamarhi, Delhi, Paris, Seoul, and Bombay, a city he has left and returned to five times. This is not merely anecdotal — it is the foundation of his art. Each return to Bombay has been an attempt to reoccupy the city on new terms, amid changing hopes.
This personal journey plays out within the larger framework of our inherited republic — with all its arrangements: nation, culture, family. The works nod to this weight, but Kumar’s insistence lies elsewhere: that even within constraint, we retain a sliver of space to create ourselves. However narrow, however hard-won, this freedom matters. Act of Republic names this double condition — the two republics: the one we get, and the one we make.
Across the works, varying motifs unravel at their own pace, rewarding close attention. The body, rendered with restraint and care, reflects gestures tied to labour, habit, and endurance. It speaks to the artist’s larger concern with how the body adapts to its world.
There are faint echoes of the Patna Kalam tradition in Kumar’s work. But like everything he inherits, he makes it unmistakably his own. His materials are painstakingly gathered by moving familiarly through Mumbai’s urban texture and his native Bihar’s past. Indigo, mica, marble dust, copper dust, and gamchas are all connected to labour, trade, and daily life.
But the most striking element is his use of old telephone directories. Once a thick, familiar presence in homes, these relics of a recent past are a fitting metaphor for a self shaped by memory and time. Kumar draws directly onto these fragile and fading pages, layering his mark atop what came before, yet again.
Perhaps this is what Kumar's art tells us: If a balance between freedom and belonging exists, it is fragile at best. There is no final, satisfying resolution. Only the ongoing work, the ritual even, of making a republic of one’s own.
Amshula, July 2025
