Art, memory and exchange converge at Myna Mukherjee’s exhibition in New Delhi

This January, Travancore Palace has become the site of an ambitious cross cultural dialogue as an exhibition titled Inheritances of Light, Geographies of Loss opens in New Delhi. Curated by Myna Mukherjee and presented by Engendered in association with the Embassy of the Netherlands, the multidisciplinary display brings together centuries of Indo Dutch artistic exchange through a single, unifying lens: light.

Conceived for a special cultural delegation from the Netherlands, including the directors of the Mauritshuis Museum and the Drents Museum, along with senior cultural diplomats, the exhibition moves beyond diplomatic formality to ask deeper questions about inheritance, memory and ethical ways of seeing.

At its heart is the idea that light is not merely optical but cultural. Beginning with the legacies of Rembrandt and Vermeer, whose mastery of light reshaped European painting, the exhibition traces how these sensibilities travelled to India, first through Raja Ravi Varma’s synthesis of European realism with Indian myth, and later through modern and contemporary practices that treat light as memory, rupture, resistance and care.

Rather than displaying canonical European works, the exhibition foregrounds moments of exchange. Mughal miniature paintings open the narrative, recalling how Rembrandt himself studied and reinterpreted Mughal figures through seventeenth century prints. These early encounters unfold into Dutch Bengal goddess paintings and Varma’s oleographs, which carried chiaroscuro into popular devotional culture across modern India.

Contemporary artists inherit this lineage not as tradition, but as an unresolved presence. Neo Mughal miniatures by Shiblee Muneer, Noureen Rashid and Anindita Bhattacharya look past present day borders to shared South Asian visual histories, while Raghava KK translates miniature consciousness into speculative digital space. Material histories, including indigo dyed textiles, carpets, terracotta works and glass, foreground labour, trade and time, drawing attention to Indo Dutch mercantile pasts under the Dutch East India Company.

Ecology and survival surface powerfully in works such as Supriyo Manna’s reed installation, which reframes destruction as care, and Alex Davis’s steel poppies referencing the opium trade. Across photography, artificial intelligence, sculpture, architecture and video, light emerges as ethical attention rather than spectacle, quietly illuminating marginal lives, erased histories and fragile ecologies.

The opening evening features a panel discussion titled Light Between Emppires: Reimagining Dutch Indian Artistic Dialogues Today, bringing together museum directors, cultural ambassadors, artists and thinkers to reflect on heritage, interpretation and future Indo Dutch collaborations. The night concludes with a live presentation by couturier JJ Valaya, whose exploration of Mughal couture extends the exhibition’s inquiry into craftsmanship, empire and continuity.

The exhibition runs from January 12 to 14, with a public opening on January 13 and 14, from 10am to 6pm.