New retrospective traces the life and art of Padma Shri awardee Jodhaiya Bai Baiga

A major retrospective celebrating the life and work of Padma Shri awardee Jodhaiya Bai Baiga is set to bring the world of one of India’s most significant indigenous artists into focus, with more than fifty of her works coming together in a new exhibition presented by Ojas Art. Curated by art historian Minhazz Majumdar, Bloom at Dusk traces the remarkable artistic journey of Baiga, who began painting in her late sixties and went on to create a powerful visual language rooted in cultural memory, spirituality, and the forests of central India.

Born in 1937 in the forested region of Umaria in Madhya Pradesh, Jodhaiya Bai spent much of her early life working as a labourer and collecting forest produce to support her family. Her entry into art came later, after artist Ashish Swami established an arts centre near her village, where she first experimented with clay, gourds, and papier mâché before moving into acrylic painting on paper and canvas. What followed was an outpouring of luminous, symbol-rich works that transformed lived experience into a vivid, mythic landscape.

The exhibition brings together paintings that draw deeply from Baiga cosmology and ecological knowledge, populated by divine figures, ancestral spirits, ritual dancers, and forest animals. Recurring motifs such as the sacred mahua tree, Lord Bholenath, and Baghesur, the tiger god, reflect the artist’s intimate relationship with nature and spiritual belief systems. Alongside celebratory imagery, Baiga also addressed environmental concerns, most notably in works responding to forest fires and ecological degradation, offering a contemporary voice grounded in indigenous wisdom.

Baiga’s contribution to Indian art was formally recognised with the Nari Shakti Puraskar in 2022 and the Padma Shri in 2023. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Milan and Paris, introducing global audiences to the visual traditions and lived realities of the Baiga community.

Curator Minhazz Majumdar described Baiga’s paintings as a transformation of memory into living colour, embodying resilience and ancestral knowledge, while Ojas Art director Anubhav Nath noted that the retrospective marks her first major solo exhibition of this scale, calling it a long-overdue recognition of her legacy.

Presented in association with the Ashish Swami Centre for Arts and the Ramchander Nath Foundation, the exhibition offers a comprehensive look at an artist whose creative flowering later in life reshaped the understanding of contemporary indigenous art in India.
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