Manthan: Let the Churn Begin Within You”, a solo show by U.S.–based artist and educator Anisha Sanghani at the Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery, Nariman Point (December 1–6, 2025), is a visceral meditation on beauty, grief, and ecological crisis. Here, oceanic life and ancient mythology collide with the overwhelming weight of human excess, pulling viewers into a quiet but urgent reckoning.

Drawing on her background in fine arts, textiles, and graphic design, Sanghani reimagines the myth of Samudra Manthan as a contemporary environmental fable. In this retelling, the churning of the cosmic ocean no longer reveals divine treasures—it drags to the surface the refuse of modern life: plastic, poison, and unpayable debt to the natural world.

Her mixed-media canvases thrum with this tension between devotion and desecration. In The New Manthan, a lone sea turtle navigates waters swirling with serpents, sea creatures, and surreal mountains of plastic waste. In Wrath, an enraged goddess erupts from the depths, embodying the fury of deities witnessing the oceans they once guarded now defiled and suffocating.

Sanghani’s lush, layered technique draws viewers in with seductive beauty before confronting them with what lies underneath. That confrontation is rooted in reality: in a series of intense personal experiments, she submerged herself in water with her face wrapped in plastic, attempting to feel—however briefly—the suffocation endured by marine animals. “I became their voice,” she says. The image is unforgettable: a human tasting the terror we impose on an entire underwater world.

“Art cannot clean the oceans,” she reminds us, “but it can remind us of what they mean to us.”

Manthan becomes that reminder—a mirror held up to our habits, our convenience, and our capacity for denial. It asks: What do we take from the ocean? What do we return? And what will rise next if we continue to look away?

Sanghani invites every visitor into this inner churning—a shift toward awareness, responsibility, and renewal.

The exhibition was inaugurated on December 1, 2025 by distinguished guests including Ms. Nidhi Choudhari, IAS, Director & Artist, National Gallery of Modern Art; Sameer Balvally and Shilpa Jain Balvally, founders of Studio Osmosis; Ronak Sutaria, CEO, Respirer Living Sciences; Rishiraj Sethi, Director, Aura Art Development Pvt Ltd and co-founder, Aura Art; Dilip Ranade, eminent artist and former Senior Curator, CSMVS; and Prakash Bal Joshi, acclaimed artist and author.

Bollywood director Harshavardhan Kulkarni, Sony marketing strategist Parinda Singh, and music director Khamosh Shah were also in attendance.

Photographs by Ajay Natke and Sharon Dev Pimento

 

“Manthan” A Solo Exhibition By U.S.–Based Artist Anisha Sanghani, Opened At Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery