Atul Dodiya

Atul Dodiya (1959, born and based in Mumbai, India) bridges Western art history with the traditions, folklore and popular culture of India to explore the impact of globalisation on the country’s sociopolitical climate. Drawing from personal observations—such as middle-class aspirations and unequal flows of capital—as well as autobiographical elements, his work takes on a vivid visual language that reflects the diversity and density of his Mumbai hometown.

Regarded as one India’s most prominent contemporary artists, Dodiya has sought to challenge the pictorial surface since the late 1990s. He works across painting, assemblage and installation to depict the frictions and fractures found throughout city life. Beginning in 2001, his renowned series of paintings done on metal shutters—a commonplace security system in street businesses—combines iconographies ranging from Pop Art to Indian mythologies, film posters to historic figures. When rolled open, the shutters reveal an additional visual layer painted within, suggesting a dissolution between boundaries while pointing to the multiple layers that constitute Dodiya’s narrative.

Dodiya received his BFA in Painting from Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1982 and completed further training at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1992. His work is held in major collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Kunsthaus Zurich; M+, Hong Kong; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; and Tate, London.

Notable exhibitions include Avatar (2025), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Avant-garde and liberation contemporary art and decolonial modernism (2024), Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Prussian Blue (2023), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; Atul Dodiya (2020), Detroit Institute of Arts Museum; Vision Exchange (2018), Art Gallery of Alberta Edmonton; 50 Years after 50 Years of the Bauhaus 1968 (2018), Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; and After Midnight (2015), Queens Museum, New York. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including May You Live in Interesting Times (2019), 58th Venice Biennale; Artist Making Movement (2015), 5th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung; 1st Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012), Kochi; APT7 (2012), 7th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; Shadow Lines (2011), 11th Biennale Jogja, Yogyakarta; 3rd Moscow Biennale (2009); Annual Report (2008), 7th Gwangju Biennale; and MEGA WAVE—Towards a New Synthesis (2001), 1st Yokohama Triennale.

Dodiya had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2005, resulting in the exhibition The wet sleeves of my paper robe (2006).