The exhibition “A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling” at MAP Bengaluru traces a continuous lineage from temple panels and hero stones to Amar Chitra Katha, webcomics and feminist graphic novels. Juxtaposing 400-year-old miniatures with contemporary works, it shows how sequential images, oral storytellers and digital art keep India’s narrative traditions alive and evolving.
American comic book writer and editor Stan Lee once said, “A picture is worth a thousand words, but a comic is worth a million.” And if you think about it, comics are something that are truly iconic memories we all carry with us. Think Amar Chitra Katha meeting Tintin, and no, it's not as far-fetched as you think. This show just brings all that together with a collection of scrolls, comics, graphic novels, cartoons, webcomics, and more to shine the spotlight firmly on the power of visual storytelling.
Spread over two exhibition halls on the third floor of the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, this new show is an unprecedented documentation of visual storytelling. “What is common to all of them is that these are stories which are being told with a sequence of images,” says Goa-based Patil. One of the first installations here is a nod to the city itself with a hero stone from the Somanatheshwara temple and black and white imagery of the wedding of Shiva and Parvati, or the Girija Kalyana, that shows all the gods, Matrikas and Shaktis in attendance. In temples, proto-sequential art shows multiversal realities in one narrative, making it a story in different panels.
A key observation you make here is how the old and new sit together with a common thread. Patil avers, "These are the kind of juxtapositions to look for. There will be something which is 400 years old and something which is from last year, and it makes utter sense that they work together.” A miniature painting which shows Sita offering her jewel to Hanuman to take back to Ram as proof that they have met. Next to it is Orijit Sen's contemporary work based on the Hamza Nama that follows the same idea of linearity shown in a single image.
A pattachitra from Midnapore in West Bengal is seen in the exhibition, and it depicts the 9/11 event in this art form. Next to it is a Kavaad, a portable wooden shrine that is an old form of storytelling. “Again you see strips of images; it is a carver, a portable author, stories told orally and a little cubbyhole where offerings are kept,” says Patil. A bright wall frames Amar Chitra Katha’s Meera Bai, a classic title done by one of the finest artists that they have ever had. “This was done by Yusuf Nia from Ahmedabad, a Muslim man working with Kamala Chandrika, the Tamilian Brahmin woman writer who created one of Bhakti's great comics, a syncretic time again that nobody needed to mention back in the day,” avers Patil.
An interesting segment of the exhibition is where the story track is not written yet, requiring an oral storyteller to be part of it. “These oral storytellers here were all itinerant as they were moving around with their wares, telling stories to changing audiences, and this element of an oral storyteller is something unique and alive in India. Why this is extra special is because the oral storyteller is not a fixed, frozen entity but is somebody that is telling the story based on interest levels in the crowd and is alive to the need of the moment,” explains Patil. And this is seen in a contemporary graphic novel based on the Mahabharata by Bengali artist Sankha Banerjee. Here, Sauti, who is traditionally the narrator of the Mahabharata, is shown in a performative way, not as a bearded sage telling a story, but as somebody that paints on the face to take on the role of an oral storyteller.
While most of this generation associates the Amar Chitra Katha series with the word comic storytelling, the exhibition highlights works from the 1950s where institutions like the Gita Press and Tirupati Temple had comics that predated Amar Chitra Katha and were based on mythological themes.
A lot of works on display here have a West Bengal connection, and a portrait of Shukhalata Rao, one of the earliest Indian women illustrators who created early sequential comic-style storytelling in Bengali magazines in the 1920s, is one example. There is also a series of works from the Tagore family as well as Satyajit Ray showing the inextricable connection of films and art.
The second hall showcases web comics, feminist revolutions by Manjula Padmanabhan, and stories and narratives that cover everything from violence to double lives to adultery to postpartum blues. Linger on at the show, and you are bound to discover so much for yourself.
The curatorial effort has taken over a year and a half, and as you navigate the different sections, the key question to answer is what parts of the old story do you fight to keep, and how willing are you to transform? Check it for yourself, and chances are the answers may reveal more than you anticipated.
On view until November 15, 2026, at the Axis & Citi Bank Galleries, MAP Bengaluru.