Kumar Misal's art is a direct reflection of his upbringing in the agricultural heartland of Kumbhoj, Kolhapur. He employs his practice as a visual autobiography, addressing the systemic challenges faced by farming communities. Witnessing societal apathy and the erosion of traditional farming practices, Misal feels a responsibility to respond through his art. His process is deeply rooted in the agricultural cycle. He crafts paper from banana, corn, and sugarcane, before applying woodcut prints—transforming natural materials into carriers of memory and resistance. Alongside this, he has explored ceramics as a medium, linking it to soil and cultivation, while drawing remains a tool for questioning and reflecting on the farmer’s contemporary condition. This material connection amplifies the narratives he conveys, presenting his work as an environmental language shaped through practice. Experimentation forms the backbone of Misal’s art and research. Whether through fibre-making, paper-making, ceramic explorations, or drawing, his practice mirrors the cultivation of crops—rooted in process, discovery, and transformation. Collaboration with his community is integral, reinforcing his connection to his roots and allowing him to act as a sutradhar (storyteller). Misal’s work serves as a vital record of a vanishing way of life, preserving its stories and struggles, while simultaneously addressing the political, social, environmental, and psychological impacts of displacement and migration.

Education & Recognition
Kumar Misal holds an M.F.A. in Printmaking and a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai. He has participated in “Ways of Seeing the City” (FICA, Mumbai – 2018) and the 4th Students’ Biennale, States of Disarray: Practice as Restitution (2021). His work has been recognized with several awards and grants, including the Krishna Reddy Award for Printmaking (2019), the Art for Hope Award from Hyundai Motor India Foundation (2022), and the LADN Grant (2023).

Residencies
Misal has undertaken various artist residencies across India, such as the Baadi Art Residency, Himachal Pradesh (2020), the Banyan Heart Residency, Hyderabad (2023), the Chandragan Organic Farm Art Residency, Udaipur (2024), and the Hampi Art Residency, Karnataka (2025).

Pratik Raut is an artist with an MFA and BFA in Painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai—both completed with first-class honours—and a Foundation Diploma from Mumbai Kala Mahavidyalaya. His practice spans painting and public art, supported by an extensive list of major awards, including multiple Maharashtra State Art Awards, the Camlin Award, Art Society of India Award, Art Heart Awards, the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation Award, the Late Shri Manjulaben Mehta Award, and repeated honours from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. He has received the HRD-CCRT Young Artist Scholarship, the Hyundai Art for Hope Grant, the Art Insept South Asia Art Grant, and recognition from South Asia Art Family (London). Raut has participated in residencies such as the Baadii Art Residency in Himachal Pradesh and the Euro Culture Art Residency in France, and has been featured in significant public art platforms including the Orange Public Art Festival and the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

At the core of Raut’s artistic practice is a profound exploration of migration, identity, and the shifting terrain of the human experience. Drawing from the dual worlds of his rural upbringing and his life in the city, he uses the tension between these environments as a lens to study how people adapt, transform, and sometimes lose themselves in the process. The instinctive migration patterns of animals from his childhood become metaphors for the collective movement of urban crowds—highlighting how individuality can dissolve into conformity under the weight of urban rhythms. His work is both nostalgic and critical: a longing for the vastness, silence, and honesty of rural life, set against the constriction, anonymity, and sensory overload of metropolitan spaces. Through these contrasts, Raut reveals not only the physical act of migration but also the internal migrations of memory, identity, and belonging. His paintings invite viewers to reflect on how displacement, aspiration, and change shape contemporary existence, and how, despite these forces, the human spirit continues to negotiate space, meaning, and resilience.

Rohan Anvekar is a Mumbai-based artist with a BFA and MFA in Painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, where he also received a fellowship in 2018. Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, he explores themes drawn from rural architecture, cultural memory, and material experimentation. His work has been widely exhibited in India and internationally, including the 30th Ravi Jain Memorial Foundation Show at Dhoomimal Gallery (Delhi), Shrishti Art Gallery’s Triloka and Emerging Palettes exhibitions (Hyderabad), Baadii Art Residency and Exhibition (Himachal Pradesh), Birla Academy of Fine Arts (Kolkata), and global online platforms. His paintings have appeared at the Student Biennale of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the International Watercolour Festival in Peru, and the Art & Science Exhibition in Berlin. Anvekar has received numerous honours such as the 62nd and 58th Maharashtra State Art Awards, the Sir J.J. Printmaking Prize, multiple national-level first prizes, and recognitions from RBI, Times of India, Camlin, and LIC. His works are held in the collections of the Reserve Bank of India, Times of India, and the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation.

Roshan Anvekar is an artist working with earthen media, painting, applied arts, and installation to create grounded, politically rooted works. He holds a BFA from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai, and an MFA in Painting from Indira Kala Sangit Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh. With eight years of practice, he has participated in numerous national exhibitions, residencies, and award platforms.

His work has been shown at the 2nd Ikattha by Team Po10tial (2023), the MASH Young Artist Exhibition at India International Centre (2022), Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery with Priyasri Art Gallery (2022), the 30th Ravi Jain Memorial Foundation Show at Dhoomimal Gallery (2021), Mumbai Gallery Weekend, ArtIncept Inception Grant exhibitions, Baadii Art Gallery (Himachal Pradesh), and the Bombay Art Society and Art Society of India at Jehangir Art Gallery.

His awards include the Ikattha Installation Award (2023), the 57th Maharashtra State Government Art Award, honours from RBI, Times of India, NBT, CAG, and Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art. He has been selected for the ArtIncept Inception Grant and the Kala Sakshi Memorial Trust Scholarship, and received the Government of India’s Young Artist Scholarship. His works are held in the collections of RBI, Times of India, and NBT.

Shamli Manasvi (22) is an emerging artist and physicist whose practice moves fluidly between drawing, illustration, painting, photography, and personal documentation. Born and raised in Kandbari on the slopes of the Dhauladhars, she grew up in a mud house in the woods amid a rural himalayan landscape that continues to anchor the sensorial and emotional world of her art. She holds a graduate and postgraduate degree in Physics from Krea University, India, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Biophysics at SUNY Buffalo State University, USA, carrying forward a rare intersection of scientific inquiry and intuitive visual expression. Making art since childhood, Shamli’s imagery arises from an internal terrain shaped by solitude, nature, and a deeply observant engagement with her surroundings. At 18, she presented her first solo exhibition Guldasta at Baadii Art Gallery—an archival collection of sixty-two works drawn from her sketchbooks, diaries, and what she calls her “mindless happenings.” The exhibition framed her early artistic life as a bouquet of spontaneous gestures: an unfolding of form, shape, and colour shaped by happenstance rather than intention.By transforming these intimate materials into prints, Guldasta acknowledged the significance of documenting a moment in an artist’s evolution before the world fully impresses itself upon them. Her work embodies the unfiltered, unselfconscious locution of a mind still discovering its place in the wider world—turning early expressions into a deliberate act of artistic preservation and a testament to a creative voice formed in the quiet, expansive rhythms of the mountains.