What does it mean to be a young artist in Bengaluru today?
Editors Note
01.
Not in the abstract, inspirational sense — but practically, specifically, with rent to pay and proposals to write in a city that sometimes sees you and sometimes does not.
That is the question we put to artists, practitioners, and thinkers for this edition of ArtsKonnect. What came back surprised us. Not because the answers were unexpected, but because they refused to be tidy. The artists in these pages disagree with each other. They contradict themselves. They are figuring things out in real time. We thought that was worth preserving.
The Institution Whisperer
IN CONVERSATION
02.
Arundhati Ghosh on young artists, honest economics, and why we need a Foundation for Artistic Failure
Arundhati Ghosh has spent three decades watching the arts ecosystem from the inside — as a practitioner, a cultural administrator, and a social activist based in Bengaluru. She has seen what institutions do well and what they quietly prevent. In this conversation, she speaks with rare directness about what has changed for young artists, what hasn’t, and what she believes institutions owe the people they claim to serve.
03.
In Between, On Purpose
Revanth Revanna on doubt, distance, and the slow making of an artist
There is a certain kind of artist who does not arrive with certainty. Who resists the urgency to declare, to produce, to belong. Instead, they hover — between disciplines, between identities, between definitions of what it means to be an artist at all. Revanth Revanna is one of them.
An actor and theatre practitioner who continues to hold a full-time job, his journey does not follow the familiar arc of early commitment and steady ascent. It is slower. More questioning. At times, deeply unsettling. But in that in-between space, something else is forming — a philosophy of practice that refuses easy answers.
The Discipline of Becoming
04.
How Sohini Karanth is building an ecosystem where instinct meets structure
There’s a moment Sohini Karanth returns to often — not because it was grand, but because it was quiet. A small rented house in Mangalore. An indefinite lockdown. An architect, suddenly without sites to visit. A dancer, suddenly without space to move.
“I remember being in the middle of designing an apartment project,” she says, “and thinking — I need something that keeps me going.” What followed wasn’t a strategy. It was a decision: one video a day, for 100 days. No audience plan. No expectation. Just a way to stay close to something that felt like home.
The Permission Revolution
05.
How Dr. Bhoomika turned a mural workshop into a movement — and what that tells us about who art is really for
Dr. Bhoomika isn’t painting walls. She’s painting possibilities. In classrooms across Bengaluru, children walk past a 15-foot astronaut — painted by 15 strangers in 3 hours — and absorb a different message than the cartoon characters it replaced. Instead of passive consumption, they see collaborative creation. Instead of imported imagery, they see professions they might actually pursue.
When Play Becomes Pedagogy
06.
How ancient games are teaching urban India about itself
The email opens with a line that stops you: “This course is not intended for children.” It is a workshop on traditional Indian games. And somehow, that makes perfect sense.
In cities like Bengaluru today, culture isn’t something we simply inherit — it’s something we return to. Intentionally. Curiously. Sometimes even academically. Inside the ‘Bharateeya-Kreedaa’ workshop, a group gathers around a board that feels familiar but distant. Someone remembers seeing it at their grandparents’ house. No one remembers how to play.
The Synthetic Renaissance
07.
On AI, artistry, and what gets lost when creation becomes frictionless
Walk through any digital gallery today and you will encounter it: the uncanny sheen of what critics have started calling AI slop. Ghibli-style landscapes that lack Miyazaki’s soul. Hyper-saturated, multi-limbed avatars clogging feeds. In 2026, AI is no longer a futuristic concept. It is a messy, intrusive, and inescapable part of the creative landscape.
