The rise of India’s art collectives and how they are reshaping identity, access, and creative practice

A host of new art collectives have sprung up, tapping into roots and identities—from Yusmarg Collective, which was formed in Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370, to artists archiving the Eastern Himalayas, to a group of indigenous artists who want to claim their rightful space, to a collaboration of female visual artists. They are not just making art but building solidarities and knowledge networks.

Praveen Chettri, a Kalimpong-based photographer, has been rifling through old family albums and institutional archives to create a visual history of his region. He is a founding member of The Confluence Collective (TCC), which is digitising photographs from the Eastern Himalayas. “We have collected and digitised around 20,000 images sourced from families, schools, and local collections,” says Chettri. “We are building it for the people in the region who want to understand and work with their histories.” TCC is a group of seven artists and researchers, spread across Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Sikkim, who got together in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.

Collectives have transformed Indian art—from the Bengal School of Art to the Progressive Artists’ Group to the Cholamandal Artists’ Village. The well-known ones were mostly collaborations of male artists who came together around a shared aesthetic or vision. They often sprang up in major cities or around art schools.

However, some of the new collectives such as TCC are emerging from geographical margins—Kashmir, Kalimpong, Assam. Even the groupings in metros like Mumbai and Bengaluru are bringing together the marginalised—from artists practising indigenous art forms to female and queer artists. Their concerns do not begin and end with the production of art. They function as archives, support systems, advocacy platforms, and even communities of care in broken lands.

Also Read: Breaking the white wall: How contemporary art galleries are evolving beyond the white cube

DRAWING ON COLLECTIVE POWER

Yusmarg Collective, Kashmir, in Charar-e-Sharief is a support system for local talent, while Srinagar’s Her Pixel Story is a women-led photography collective. Sandbox Collective in Bengaluru works with women and gender and sexual minorities, while Maraa in the city examines questions of caste, gender, migration, and labour.

Anga Art Collective is an artist-led initiative run from a bamboo structure called The Granary in the Rani Reserve Forest near Guwahati. Kadak Collective brings together South Asian women and non-binary and queer folk who are working with graphic storytelling. In Mumbai, Indian Arts Collective (IAC) seeks to reposition traditional and indigenous practitioners as artists rather than craftspeople. And nine women working with the visual medium, who bonded over an 8:30 p.m. Zoom call every week during the pandemic, have turned their friendship into a collective called just that—8:30.

Alka Pande, art historian, author, and curator, says collectives have always been part of the Indian artscape, dating back to the pre-modern era when weavers, jewellers, and ironsmiths worked within community-based systems. “With modernity and the rise of the individual artist, those collective ways of working began to fade. The signature became important. What we are seeing today is, in some ways, a return to collective thinking,” she says. What has changed are the concerns—gender, identity, ecology, community—issues that cannot be tackled alone. “The scope of the collectives now is not simply to create art. Their most important function is to sensitise the public,” she adds.

Jaya Asokan, fair director of India Art Fair, sees a broader shift in how artists want to work today. “Increasingly, artists are looking beyond individual practice towards models built around collaboration, shared resources, and collective forms of knowledge-making. This is partly a response to the realities of our time—economic pressures, the need for interdisciplinary exchange, and a desire to engage more meaningfully with communities and place,” she says.

SPACE FOR DIALOGUE

A case in point is the Yusmarg Collective, Kashmir. It was conceived in 2019 after the abrogation of Article 370 and came of age during the pandemic. For visual practitioner and founder Salman Bashir Baba, the circumstances created a need for artists to find each other. “There was a void. People didn’t have any space for dialogue,” he says. What emerged was not a conventional collective. It held workshops and exhibitions, but its greatest achievement is less tangible. “A collective is a space for artists to come together, share concerns and anxieties, and support one another. In difficult times, when people feel isolated or depressed, community itself becomes a source of hope,” he says. “A collective creates a circle of care and comfort.”

They also help students from the Valley navigate art courses and opportunities. “The art scene can be very intimidating for a young artist, especially from Kashmir,” says Baba. In July, Yusmarg starts a residency pilot. A physical arts space with a library is also in the works.

Asokan says residency programmes, grant-making bodies, and cultural organisations are increasingly recognising collective practice. “Collaborative practices once had limited institutional visibility. But now there is a greater willingness to support artist-led collectives. This has encouraged more artists to build shared platforms,” she says.

In Assam, Anga Art Collective engages with local knowledge systems, ecology, and the social realities of the Northeast through research, exhibitions, and public programmes. “Our inspiration to work as a collective comes from the society we grew up in,” says founding member, artist and filmmaker Dhrubajit Sarma. “This is not just a platform for exhibiting art, but a space for learning, questioning existing knowledge systems, and developing practices that emerge from the place we inhabit.”

A similar impulse drives Maraa, founded by people disillusioned with the hierarchies in the development sector. For nearly two decades, it has used storytelling to challenge narratives. It hosts an arts festival, October Jam, in Bengaluru and has co-founded an inter-generational theatre troupe, Freeda, in Madhya Pradesh. Says member Angarika: “Art and storytelling are ways for people to speak in their own voices, challenge dominant narratives, and imagine alternatives.”

If earlier generations of artists’ groups were united by manifestos, today’s collectives are just as likely to be united by emotional solidarity. Like 8:30 Collective. They had got together to produce a zine, which didn’t happen. What emerged instead was far more enduring—friendship. In March, they held their first exhibition, “Interior Weather”, at Dilip Piramal Art Gallery, NCPA, Mumbai.

Photographer and writer Zahra Amiruddin says 8:30 is a space where they share work, resources, opportunities, and life itself. The collective has organised fundraisers, exhibitions, and residencies with photographer Dayanita Singh. “The art world can often be an isolated and competitive space. A collective helps as we aren’t afraid to share our resources and advice. Over time, we almost serve as one another’s agents,” says Amiruddin. “Competition is the antithesis of a collective.”

Photography can be a lonely profession—and that is why collectives matter, says Tejal Pandey, head, Dilip Piramal Art Gallery. “Artists need a creative space for conversations where ideas find root and take flight.” She points to 8:30 as a resonant example—artists who organically sought out each other when isolation and loneliness were peaking. “What they created was a safe space to nurture their art, while also nurturing friendship, sisterhood, and companionship.” Her gallery has lined up shows by collectives in the coming months.

Collectives now have a very defined purpose, says Anu Chowdhury-Sorabjee, art historian and founding partner of IAC. Founded in 2017, IAC brings together practitioners working in traditional and indigenous art forms like Gond, Pattachitra, Phad, and Mata ni Pachedi. It challenges the longstanding distinction between art and craft. “The objective is to bring traditional artists into a gallery space through an annual exhibition where they are appreciated and viewed at par with contemporary artists,” she says.

MANY CHALLENGES

Yet, for all their idealism, collectives face real challenges. Funding is the most persistent. Many are self-funded; others rely on grants, crowdfunding, teaching, or contributions. Members routinely juggle multiple jobs.

Kulture Shop, a Mumbai-based platform that championed graphic artists, ran for 10 years before taking its last order in July 2024. Arjun Charanjiva had built it to create an affordable art movement, but there were many challenges, the biggest being that there was no established market for graphic art. “We had to help create the art, build collections, explain it to customers, and build an audience. That was the price of being early.” The store-led model was working, but COVID disrupted it.

He says, “An art collective cannot rely only on cultural energy. It needs a resilient economic model, multiple revenue streams, and enough capital to survive shocks.” He adds, “Protect the artists but also protect the business model. If the platform is not sustainable, it cannot support anyone for long.” Pande agrees: “The work is extraordinary, but these are not always market-friendly subjects. Meaningful work alone cannot sustain a collective forever.”

Asokan underlines a significant development in recent years—the growing visibility of artistic communities outside the metros. “As collectives rooted in specific regions respond directly to local histories, languages, ecologies, and social contexts, this geographic decentralisation is making the Indian art ecosystem richer and more representative,” she says. Even IAF launched IAF ED+IONS last year to expand beyond Delhi.

Angarika says collectives are needed to democratise access and create safe spaces: “The political climate today is increasingly pushing towards homogenisation. Our work is really about finding ways to pluralise those narratives.” For Sarma, working from Assam is about remaining accountable to the context in which the collective is rooted. “Our practice grows from interactions with people, histories, and ecologies here, rather than responding to expectations of the mainstream art world,” he says.

Back in Kalimpong, Chettri remains unconcerned by conventional measures of impact. “For many people, an outcome has to be a book or an exhibition. For us, the act of archiving is itself an outcome.” Researchers use it; communities engage with it.

He says, “We often assume that a collective has to look and function a certain way, probably inspired by a Western model. In reality, your context should define your collective.”

INDIAN ARTS COLLECTIVE

MUMBAI

It has traditional and indigenous artists who work in art forms such as Gond, Pattachitra, Phad, and Mata ni Pachedi. It seeks to reposition them as artists rather than craftspeople.

“One of our biggest challenges is getting people to see these practitioners as artists. We want to present their work in a gallery, with the same seriousness as contemporary art,” ANU CHOWDHURY-SORABJEE, founding partner.

8:30 COLLECTIVE

During COVID, nine women working with the visual medium would have a weekly 8:30 p.m. Zoom call. That has now become a collective that just held their first exhibition.

“What really binds us is showing up for each other. We share work, opportunities, and resources, but we also talk about life,” ZAHRA AMIRUDDIN, member.

YUSMARG COLLECTIVE KASHMIR

CHARAR-E-SHARIEF, J&K

Formed after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, it is a space for artists and cultural practitioners to gather, exchange ideas, and build networks of dialogue and artistic solidarity.

“It is a circle of care and comfort. It gives artists a space to come together, share concerns and support one another. When people feel isolated, community becomes a source of hope,” SALMAN BASHIR BABA, founder.

ANGA ART COLLECTIVE

ASSAM

It creates spaces where artists, researchers, and communities can think together and generate alternatives to metropolitan and institutional-driven models of art practice.

“We want to understand how indigenous philosophies and community practices can guide us at a time when everything seems to be collapsing,” DHRUBAJIT SARMA, founding member.

MARAA

BENGALURU

Uses art, media, and storytelling to examine questions of caste, gender, migration, labour, and representation. “Art is a way for people to speak in their own voices, challenge dominant narratives, and imagine alternatives,” ANGARIKA, member.

THE CONFLUENCE COLLECTIVE

DARJEELING–KALIMPONG–SIKKIM

It documents the visual histories of the Eastern Himalayan region. Through archiving, digitisation, and research, it reclaims local narratives and creates resources.

“We are building an archive for the region—one that helps people understand their histories, identities and place in the world,” PRAVEEN CHETTRI, founding member.

India has always had collectives. What we are seeing today are new concerns—gender, ecology, sustainability, and community. The role of collectives today is not simply to create art; they sensitise the public, build awareness, and create communities around issues that matter,” DR ALKA PANDE, art historian and curator.