NEEL AMBAR
Exhibition essay by Rumi Samadhan
Vikrant Bhise's solo Neel Ambar brings together an expansive body of work that serves as an archive of the Ambedkarite movement, using the colour blue to articulate a collective consciousness.
In this exhibition, blue embodies B. R. Ambedkar's boundless vision, across scholarship, resistance, and assertion against caste oppression. It figures as a chromatic visual language for collective identity, aspiration, and cultural belonging. Samata, or equality, a core principle for the anti-caste movement, finds symbolic expression in this blue. As an Ambedkarite artist, Bhise thinks through forms of equality, placing himself within the historic moment when the Republic of India was established and the Indian Constitution came into effect. Drawing from the traditions of the Phule-Ambedkarite movement, his works foreground the citizens of India, particularly the oppressed and the labouring communities.
Against the current socio-political reality, Bhise's practice underscores labour, protest, and equality as visual and conceptual frameworks for understanding the anti-caste struggle. Drawing on cultural observations and literary traditions rooted in Ambedkarite scholarship, he develops a kinetic visual language and creates atmospheric narratives that traverse histories and geographies. His works serve as registers of collective memory grounded in lived realities rather than transcendence. He renders figures and architectural forms on muted terrains, using bold, sweeping brushstrokes to create a distinct artistic vocabulary. His visual forms oscillate between entanglement and equanimity. These gestures activate the spatial and temporal dimensions, by turns collapsing, resurrecting, and remaining suspended in a continuous flux.
Bhise grew up in a chawl in Tagore Nagar, Vikhroli East, Mumbai. His father Vishvas Bhau Bhise was closely involved with the Dalit Panthers and other anti-caste movements in Maharashtra. He grew up hearing about his father's associations with Vaman Dada Kardak, the Ambedkarite poet and cultural activist, and prominent figures from the Dalit Panther movement such as Bhai Sangre and Raja Dhale. His uncle Prakash Bhau Bhise, an art teacher at the Bandra School of Arts in Mumbai, introduced him to art after he completed his matriculation. His uncle's artworks on Namdeo Dhasal's Golpitha left a lasting impact on him. Bhise's childhood in Vikhroli continues to inform his practice, the neighbourhood emerging as an extension of the self and the collective. Here, the idea of the self expands to encompass the collective voices of the oppressed, centring shared experiences of marginalisation and resistance.
Samata - Stupas of Equality (2026) documents hundreds of encounters, presented on stupa-shaped frames. Across this body of work, the stupas, ancient monuments enshrining the relics of Buddha and Buddhist monks, become sites of remembrance and meditation. Through incidents drawn from the anti-caste struggle, the work reflects on the ongoing quest for equality and dignity. Bhise depicts forms of oppression and the transformative states wrought by collective struggle, wherein the marginalised demand justice. He examines the generational denial of access to public resources such as water and education, the horrors of caste-based lynchings and violent forms of oppression, as well as the pervasive and enduring structures of patriarchy.
In Samata - Stupas of Equality, bodies resist erasure, converging collectively as a shared embodiment of solidarity. The figures depicted in the works evoke the past and present of the anti-caste movement and contemporary protests demanding civil rights-the nation-wide dissent against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019-20, the historic farmers' protests of 2020-21, and the recent movement led by the Cockroach Janta Party and student groups in response to a collapsing education system and electoral malpractices, mobilising young people across the country-while remaining witness to how a distinct digital language of dissent joined forces with collective action on ground. Bhise also advocates for women's right to self-assertion, acknowledging them as equal participants in resistance movements. Ambedkar and his ideologies, an all-encompassing presence in Bhise's practice, also feature in this body of work. Bhise's visual language delineates how Ambedkar, a social reformer and India's first Minister of Law and Justice, paved the path for Dalit liberation, social justice, and civil rights. Ambedkar was an active proponent for safeguarding labour laws and also advanced the cause of gender equality through the Hindu Code Bill.
For Bhise, the self is integrated within the collective. He locates himself within his community drawing from collective memory, lived realities, and histories of resistance. Bhise's ongoing practice explores his neighbourhood, documenting subcultures through sustained community engagement. In his works, the self becomes both the observer and the repository of shared experiences, as Bhise takes us through the dense networks of Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar situated in Ghatkopar East, Mumbai, in Wheel of Dhamma (2026). The work depicts the weathered architecture of the chawls and the embedded Ambedkarite iconography present within them-Dhammachakra gateways, stupa-shaped entrances, and Dhamma's wheel windows, which refer to Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath as a symbolic turning of time, and chaityas (shrines) of Buddha and Ambedkar revered in each home. The Wheel of Dhamma, which lends its title to the work, embodies the teachings of the Buddha.
Wheel of Dhamma provides a glimpse into the lives of the working classes and their shared community spaces, anchored by a statue of Ambedkar around which bodies gather in reverence. The legacy of Dr. Ambedkar is commemorated through Ambedkar Jayanti, Buddha Purnima, Dhamma Chakra Pravartan Din, and Mahaparinivan Din, accompanied by theatre performances, lectures, public readings, and other cultural activities.
The work also records the Ramabai Nagar incident of 1997 as a societal scar, when protests against the desecration of Dr. Ambedkar's statue led to police firing, resulting in the loss of ten lives. The powada poet-performer Vilas Ghogre condemned this police violence and consequently died by suicide. The plight and resistance of the people are reflected in his song, Aya Re May Din Aya (May Day has arrived).
Bhise's enduring engagement with labour as a subject is evident across his practice. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic had left the migrant-labourer across India in a precarious condition as they walked homewards. Bhise says, "Labourers who build our homes are often left homeless, landless, living on the fringes as 'broken men'." He depicts fragmented land and labouring bodies as a site of resistance and displacement in Vihara of Blue Consciousness (2026). In Buddhism, the vihara is where monks dwell; it is also a site of learning. In Bhise's work, a dense visual field is formed by an interplay of light and darkness, depicting a terrain of converging bodies-including the ones that are socially invisible-at the intersections of social fragmentation and collapse. Shelters, belongings, and objects twist mid-air, and wheels suggest the turning of time, collective transformation, social displacement, and resistance. Hands rise gesturally in a collective expression of solidarity, while closer to the ground, Marathi Shahir Vaman Dada Kardak invokes the tradition of powada-protest poetry rooted in Ambedkarite ideals of dignity and equality. Vihara of Blue Consciousness also conceptualises the vihara as a ground for knowledge, learning, and unlearning, an immersive field of Ambedkarite scholarship, culture, and literature, and a shared site of resistance. Dispelling the darkness of ignorance, the work brings together Savitribai Phule's Kavyaphule, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Anna Bhau Sathe's Fakira, Jyotirao Phule's Gulamgiri, Little Magazines, theatre practices, and powadas, existing simultaneously as manifestations of the consciousness of blue.
In Krantijyoti (क्रांतिज्योती) - Light of Revolution (2026), Bhise depicts the lived realities of entrapped communities and the systemic invisibilisation of their sufferings. He refers to the post-1960s Ambedkarite writer-poet Anna Bhau Sathe's 'Makdiche Jaal', where a spider's web is used as a metaphor to depict the social entrapment of caste and labour. The industrial skylines in the work provide an insight into working-class neighbourhoods. Moving through the bylanes of Chembur's Siddharth Colony, Ghatkopar's Ramabai Ambedkar Nagar, Matunga Labour Camp, and Worli's BDD chawls, Bhise portrays human settlement within the contested geographies of Mumbai. These fragile worlds, continually threatened by redevelopment, hold the traces of histories that have been eroded, while also underscoring how the city has been shaped by industrial labour. The sirens of the mills and the labour that sustained Mumbai's ever-expanding economic life exist alongside forms of cultural production that have generated distinct and resilient alternative cultural traditions.
In the work, the dimly-lit night sky emerges as a charged temporal and spatial register, with shared spaces around the shekoti, or the community fire, where poetry and prose are performed, meals are shared, and marriage rituals and festivities are carried out. A lone figure is depicted drinking water alongside an animal. Unhealed wounds commemorate the atrocities faced by Dalit people-the incidents of Una, Hathras, Khairlanji, or Ramabai Nagar. Bhimgeet, powada, abhanga, and other forms of protest poetry ignite the light of revolution. The chowk, or public square, takes the form of a vihara, turning into a centre for collective learning and knowledge-sharing. Bhise also reflects on the poet-educator Savitribai Phule, who, along with her husband, the prominent Marathi social reformer Jyotirao Phule, institutionalised girls' education by establishing a network of schools 1848 onwards, making education a means of social transformation. She was honoured with the name Krantijyoti, which means light of revolution.
Bhise's Baluta (बलुतं) (2026) draws on Daya Pawar's 1978 autobiography of the same name to reflect the experiences of the disenfranchised and their historical exploitation-tracing their transformation into a speaking, remembering, witnessing subject. The work situates the intersection of migration and marginalisation. The social conditions of displacement and instability are read from the perspective of the oppressed as they reclaim their voice, subverting the status quo. The visual entity for labour in the work is imagined as a migrating, wandering body carrying the imprint of land, earth, concrete, harvest, and a longing for a place to call one's own. 'Baluta' denotes the traditional grain share received by labourers from the village folk: an unequal share jeopardising conditions of livelihood and dignity within a rural economy. Bhise also reflects on agrarian exploitation and displacement through Jyotirao Phule's Gulamgiri (Slavery) and Shetkaryacha Asud (Cultivator's Whipcord), translating a colossal triptych into a resounding call for justice and awakening. The work also invokes the concept of "broken men," as proposed by Ambedkar in his book The Untouchables (1948), where he traces their origins to surviving tribal groups, socially-excluded Buddhists who retained their distinct identities, and communities engaged in cultivation, production, and labour.
The Elayaperumal Committee Report (1969), which brought to light approximately 11,000 atrocities committed against Dalits, became a catalyst for the emergence of Dalit Panthers, co-founded by Namdeo Dhasal, J. V. Pawar, Raja Dhale, Daya Pawar, and Arjun Dangle on 29 May 1972. Dalit Panthers as a movement found momentum through their manifesto in 1973 and journalistic activism in Marathi weeklies and columns such as Sadhana, Satyakhata, and Saamana. Bhise's visceral sketches create an entry point into the visual archives of the Dalit Panther's' legacy. Raja Dhale's article titled 'काळा स्वातंत्र्यदिन' (Kala Swatantrya Din, or Black Independence Day) in Sadhana had questioned the meaning of Independence for Dalits in the face of rising caste-based atrocities. The Dalit Panthers movement entailed the Dalit literary movement of 1960s-70s Maharashtra, producing a surge in Dalit autobiographical writings. The writers drew from lived experiences and from Buddha, Kabir, Phule, and Ambedkar, experimenting with poetry, prose, and journalistic forms of writing through the Little Magazine Movement (1955-1975), and asserting Dalit autonomy in publishing and circulation.
Bhise's visceral sketches Archival Historicity / Dalit Panthers (2026) create an entry point into the visual archives of the Dalit Panthers' legacy. The body of work draws upon his experiences of growing up in a working-class neighbourhood, similar to one that mobilised the Panthers. The Dalit Panthers emerged parallel to the Black Arts Movement, one of the most influential cultural and aesthetic movements to have grown out of the tumultuous American '60s and '70s. The Dalit Panthers also drew inspiration from the Black Panther Party, founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966 to advocate for Black self-determination in the United States. Bhise's works memorialise the Dalit Panthers, marking their role in seeking material, moral, and spiritual emancipation for the Dalit community.
Bhise's practice builds on Ambedkar's emancipatory ideals. His works become more resonant when situated within the larger framework of this exhibition, in which Bhise chronicles the memory and experiences of the Dalit-Bahujan community, alongside various trajectories of the anti-caste movement, transforming them into a visual archive that subverts hegemonic narratives surrounding caste in the Indian subcontinent. In Neel Ambar, there are no myths, no barriers; rather a vast, unfolding expansion of metta (kindness), karuna (compassion), and ahimsa (non-violence)-reminiscent of the sky and its limitless horizon.
Rumi Samadhan is an independent researcher, curator, and visual artist based in Mumbai and Kolhapur. She holds a PG in Curatorial Studies from Dr. BDL Museum, Mumbai. Her research interests span Existential Politics, Museum and Regional Studies. As a CISA 2019 Fellow at Khoj, she curated The Mahad Satyagraha - 'Erasure' as a Form of Assertion.
