Indulge Chennai 19th Anniversary Special: How artists are redefining the city's cultural landscape

Morning walkers in a Chennai park aren’t usually greeted by contemporary photography, but when the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) first filled Nageshwar Rao park in Mylapore with images back in 2016, it offered a glimpse of a changing city. For a long time, Chennai’s creative life ran on parallel tracks that rarely crossed. Dance, classical music, painting and gallery shows each had their own audience and their own etiquette. As art curator Jonathan Faust puts it, “It was more a ‘if you know, you know’ sort of space.”

Today, that rigid infrastructure is loosening up. Across parks, malls, heritage spaces, and independent venues, a new generation of artists, designers, and creative collectives are refusing to wait for traditional permission. They are building their own stages, sparking cross-disciplinary conversations, and shaping the cultural pulse of tomorrow’s Chennai.

Reflecting on the creative evolution, Chennai-based artist Shiva Ravishankar notes, “When we started out as artists, we couldn’t find a space like the Madras Art Movement, something so vibrant. That’s what has made us get into the space of creating our own communities, because that infrastructure is basically non-existent.”

That circle has got advanced today. Over the past five or six years, open mics, independent venues and informal exhibitions have multiplied, and conversations about art have moved beyond technique into ideas. Jonathan, who runs The Sunshine House with Purple, shares how their collective now stages close to 10 shows a year, and it began in a city that was far less curious. Their explanation is straightforward. After the pandemic, people searching for meaning turned to art and therapy, and social media amplified that habit.

Growing beyond the gallery

The most visible change is where art now lives. It has spilled out of white-walled rooms and into shopping centres, parks, beaches, and heritage buildings.

Shreyans Bohra, founder of Artiform and The Collectors Room, a contemporary cultural gallery, sees the same widening from the design side. Chennai’s scene, he says, has grown more diverse and experimental, with art, design, and architecture talking to one another far more than they used to. Sumi Gupta, curator of Madras Art Guild, puts it in terms of connection. “Five years ago, visual art, architecture, music, technology and craft sat in separate circles. Today, people across these fields seek each other out, and together they are creating work that none of them would have made alone.” For her, the real sign of growth is not a bigger headcount of artists but a new confidence to take Chennai's talent beyond familiar boundaries.

For Varun Gupta, co-founder of the Chennai Photo Biennale, this was a response to scarcity. When the Biennale began, almost no Chennai gallery was willing to show photography. Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai each have about 30 to 40 spaces where an exhibition can happen, he points out, whereas in Chennai “you can still count on one hand the number of spaces that are large, free, and open to the public, and that’s the big key.”

So CPB went to where people already were. Its first edition, in 2016, filled Nageshwar Rao Park in Mylapore with images for morning walkers and families who had come for a stroll. A decade on, Varun still meets people who date their interest in photography to that park. A later exhibition at Anna Nagar’s VR Chennai mall introduced photography to around 140,000 people. “Even if you see a Lalit Kala Akademi, it’s a white cube gallery. Not everybody will enter, not everybody feels like they want to go, and not everybody goes. But if you put an exhibition in a train station, they have a chance to discover a new art form,” Varun says.

Sumi Gupta’s organisation works on the same principle at a far larger scale. MAG, launched in Chennai in 2019, is part of a public art festival network that spans Bengaluru, Chennai, Amritsar, Nagpur, and Surat. Across 33 editions it reports more than 11 million visitors, over 20,000 participating artists and more than 15,000 students. “A public space meets people where they are,” she says. Earlier, visitors paused, asked questions, and took photographs. Today, she notes, many arrive looking for the work, ready to discuss it and bring their own readings.

Varun credits a wider push for shifting tastes toward installation and interactive work. Shiva observes that the older patrons are equally encouraging.“When they see a young person coming and doing art and engaging, the older crowd is happy to see people reviving it and promoting interest in art,” Shiva says.

Ashvin Rajagopalan, director of Ashvita’s gallery, offers a sharper diagnosis of why the move is happening. Footfall at traditional cultural venues, he suggests, has become hard to sustain, so programmes migrate to hotels and malls. His reasoning is that “the truth is people are looking for an experience, and the existing places of cultural engagement lack experience, which is why the music seasons need the sabhas, art galleries need cocktails, and so on and so forth.”

But not all of the shift is happening outdoors. A parallel movement brings art into domestic and design settings, says Shreyans. He shares that showing work in a lived-in or designed environment “makes art more accessible and part of everyday life.” Shreyans sees a growing dialogue between contemporary design and Chennai’s cultural identity, with natural materials and regional influences being reinterpreted in modern ways.

Building a stage

Ask who is powering this energy and the answers might get divided. Sunshine House has no doubt. “Independent collective efforts, definitely,” the pair say. Institutions, in their view, have mostly offered constancy rather than evolution. They point to groups such as Urban Sketchers Chennai, Artist.Chennai, Studio Erimin, Kannadi Cupboard, Pagir, and Backyard as the places where new work now finds its footing, along with talk-led formats such as Charpoi Chatter and SustainabilATTI, a show on slow fashion.

Sumi takes the middle path. The energy, she argues, comes from the place where both worlds meet. Art schools, museums and long-standing cultural bodies give artists history and credibility, while independents bring freedom to experiment and question

Ashvita’s position itself as one that is both institutional and forward-looking. The gallery’s stated mission is to grow the Madras Art Movement, and it has been exhibiting extensively at Lalit Kala Akademi for this, which Ashvin calls a truly democratic space. It also runs Contemporary Now, a curator-led show that brings selected galleries and their artists to cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad, with Bengaluru, Kochi and other southern cities earmarked for the future. Both Chennai editions, he says, were very successful.

The infrastructure crunch

For all the momentum, the speakers return to the same obstacles: space, funding, and structure. Ashvin says, “In Chennai, the infrastructure for art has always been very minimal. If you look at public spaces where art can actually be shown, where a gallery or an artist can rent a space or be invited to a space, we are limited to the Lalit Kala Akademi in Chennai and places like the Madras Museum and other government institutions. These are still very difficult to navigate for this purpose.”

Sunshine House describes a scattering of information that is hard to use. Someone who says “I want to be an artist” has no clear route to follow. Colleges, they argue, nurture ideas and technique but stop short of teaching execution, such as career planning, financial goals and programmes to join. That, they believe, is why so many people enrol in art college while far fewer end up with art in their jobs. For Purple, who comes from a family without an art background, building a platform for artists was her own first step.

Funding and career sustainability remain heavy walls. Shiva points out a major hurdle.“Making it (art ) into a full-time career is still a big hurdle for us. The way it’s structured seems still fragmented, and awareness about making a good livelihood out of freelance creative work is missing.” Furthermore, Shiva emphasises the need for state backing.“We have to get the state to support artists. Look at Ireland, where they gave a monthly salary to a few artists and the economic contribution turned out to be very positively impacting the town—that infrastructure is hugely missing from a city like Chennai.”

The next phase, however, is already being planned, led by initiatives like the CPB’s upcoming December 2027 edition and the tireless efforts of local independents and studios. What the city needs now, as these voices highlight, are accessible rooms to hold them all, institutional and state backing to keep them going, and a clear map to help newcomers find their way in.

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.