Talwar, New Delhi is delighted to present A self in waiting, featuring an important group of early paintings by Rummana Hussain. The exhibition brings together works from 1988-1991 for the first time in over three decades. This body of work underscores the tendencies and concerns that would ground Rummana’s later, better-known pioneering installations, sculptures, and performance works that were among the first in India.
The Angel and Colaba, 1990 (Detail)
Rummana Hussain was born in 1952, just five years after India’s independence from the British colonial rule. Hussain was born into a family with deep public roots: her father was the first commandant of the National Defense Academy, and her mother was an active member of the Congress party. This upbringing laid the groundwork for her progressive politics and activism. Later this awareness found a fertile creative milieu at Garhi studios in Delhi where Rummana moved in 1985.
For the next few years, Hussain, inspired by the figurative Baroda School artists as Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh and Bhupen Khakhar, and Delhi artists Arpita Singh, Manjit Bawa and Vivan Sundaram, embarked on her own use of figuration to explore concerns of exploitation, power and marginalization on the basis of gender, religion and socioeconomic status. While drawing inspiration from Brecht and Bruegel, Hussain created largely allegorical and mythical compositions to examine the human condition. Juxtaposing the real and the fabled, Hussain exposed the class struggles, patriarchal dominance, communal hostilities, ritualistic tendencies and industrial transitions, not as a passive observer but as one who found herself very much within it.
I draw upon established mythological sources & attempt to recreate new myths which arise from the reality around me.
Rummana Hussain
Big Fish Eat Little Fish III, 1989 (Detail)
The raw and forceful strokes of intense colors in works from the late 1980s impart an urgency to the unfolding drama on her canvases where fantastical imaginary characters appear alongside figures from her own life, often in urban settings of Bombay. Bathed in twilight blues these liminal settings are reflections on power, vulnerability, violence and human behaviour. In Big Fish Eat Little Fish III (1989) Hussain pits a foreground of raw violence against a cityscape drowning in a thunderstorm. A towering figure on a colossal fish presides over a hierarchy of consumption, visualizing an unyielding cycle of dominance. This tension shifts in The Angel and Colaba (1990) where a winged presence spirits a woman away from the dense urban sprawl—leaving the promise of rescue suspended in an ambivalent pull between flight and belonging.
Towards the end of 1992 Hussain’s work was profoundly affected by widespread communal violence, bringing questions of identity and belonging into sharper focus. Her allegorical language evolved from imagined and mythical figures toward historical female figures and then her own self, while the female body remained a persistent site of inquiry. As these concerns intensified around and within her, its tempest invigorated Rummana with a boldness to transition from a veiled exploration of self to a public, vulnerable personal awakening. Untethered from the two dimensional – Hussain pioneered and profoundly engaged objects, fragments, earth, terracotta, moving image, installation, and performance to extract purpose and confront social and human realities in all their layering and complexities.
Hussain emerged as an important figure in the contemporary art of India during the 1980s and 1990s. The social and political upheavals of the period, particularly the events of 1992–93, became an important context for her practice. Works from this period explored the effects of communal violence and the marginalization of the “other,” while also addressing the female body, memory, and the relationship between the personal and the political.
Hussain emerged as an important figure in the contemporary art of India during the 1980s and 1990s. The social and political upheavals of the period, particularly the events of 1992–93, became an important context for her practice. Works from this period explored the effects of communal violence and the marginalization of the “other,” while also addressing the female body, memory, and the relationship between the personal and the political.
Hussain’s works have been exhibited at major institutions internationally, including The Barbican, London; Tate Modern, London; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi; Fowler Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Art Gallery of Mississauga, Ontario; National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai; Asia Society, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Art in General, New York; Queens Museum, New York; Rose Art Museum; and Vancouver Art Gallery.
More recently, Hussain’s work was featured in the India Pavilion, Our Time for a Future Sharing, at the 58th Venice Biennale. Her work was also presented in a solo exhibition in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (2023), New York, and was included in The Imaginary Institution of India at The Barbican, London (2024).
Rummana Hussain was born in Bangalore in 1952, and passed away in 1999 in Mumbai, India.
[Rummana] led the allegory of self into more interstitial spaces, where class identities coalesce to produce a hypothetical female subject—vain and abject,
courageous and bold.
Geeta Kapur
Violated isolation | 1991
Oil on canvas
76.75" x 74"
TG 3131
Untitled | 1991
Oil on canvas
67.5" x 36.5"
TG 3135
Untitled | 1991
Oil on canvas
66" x 74.5"
TG 3061
The Immersion | 1990
Oil on Canvas
52.5” x 43.5”
TG 3045
Pandora’s Box | 1990
Oil on Canvas
52.5” x 43.5”
TG 3052
The Angel and Colaba | 1990
Oil on Canvas
48.5” x 60.75”
TG 3057
The dark times | 1990
Oil on canvas
43" x 52"
TG 3053
Sacrifice of Ibrahim | 1989
Oil on Canvas
44.5” x 38.5”
TG 3047
Big fish eat little fish III | 1989
Oil on canvas
47.5" x 38"
TG 3048
Cat and fish | 1989
Oil on Canvas
48.5” x 60.25”
TG 3056
Untitled | 1989
Oil on canvas
65.5" x 71"
TG 3129
An incident at sea | 1989
Oil on Canvas
40.5” x 40.5”
TG 3046
Icarus | 1989
Oil on Canvas
52.75” x 43.75”
TG 3054
The Sacrifice of Ibrahim | 1988
Oil on canvas
67" x 73"
TG 3127
Untitled | 1988
Oil on Canvas
26.25” x 51.5”
TG 3105
