Five days of silence. Chants dialled down after nearly one-and-a-half months of sit-in demonstrations that began at Jantar Mantar and rippled across the country. What began on June 6 as a protest initiated by Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke with nearly 1,200 people demanding a fair National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and the resignation of the former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, among others, grew into a nationwide movement drawing tens of thousands before the Union Government accepted its demands on July 25. Dubbed the “Gen Z protest” by the internet, online warriors made it onto the streets while introducing a new version of protest with trending audios, memes, and reels. Yet, the traditional methods did not disappear; they simply got a glow-up. From the classic photos and sayings of BR Ambedkar, Periyar, and Che Guevara; representing the youth-led movement to hand-painted placards and open-source illustration, printouts of satirical memes travelled alongside the slogans.
Unlike protest posters of the past that were, initially, largely confined to the streets, today’s visuals are created with two destinations in mind: the protest site and Instagram feeds. An illustration was no longer just something pasted onto a wall once it became popular. It became a reel cover, a downloadable placard, a WhatsApp status, and eventually, something that returned to the streets on sheets. The same image existed simultaneously as digital content and as a protest prop, blurring the lines between online activism and physical demonstrations.
As the movement unfolded, artists, irrespective of medium, across the country found themselves participating in the protests through visual arts. Their works not only reflected the emotions of the moment but also became one of the movement’s identities.
The popularity of these visuals was hardly accidental. For the artists behind them, like Delhi-based visual artist, illustrator, and graphic designer Shweta, they were just bringing the popular saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” to life. While speeches, press notes, and petitions require attention and understanding, she agrees that visual arts “cross language barriers, are easy to share, and have the power to create an emotional connection that words alone often can’t”. Alisha, founder of Alisha’s Art Lab, a commercial artist & muralist from Mumbai, adds depth to Shweta’s opinion, “Visual art cuts through the noise. When you look at a massive crowd, a well-designed placard or a piece of satirical art communicates an entire movement’s demands in a fraction of a second.”
Sriram B, a Chennai-based artist, sees art immensely democratic: “It is crucial during resistance that our message, demands, and anger get through people and the oppressor as quickly as possible.Visuals became the first and most popular works among people because all stakeholders look at them and understand. Class, caste, and education do not matter.” Although every artist had their own visual language, several recurring symbols emerged as a shared visual vocabulary.
Across the country, artists borrowed from constitutional imagery, pop culture, cinema, everyday objects, and internet slang to make complex political conversations instantly understandable. The Constitution, cockroaches, chai, the three wise monkeys, spines, sanitary pads, condoms, accountability, dating slang, and dialogues from films and advertisements became recurring visual motifs. In Tamil Nadu, these were layered with regional references. Anitha — a medical aspirant who died by suicide in September 2017 after failing to secure a medical seat due to her score in NEET — was commemorated through visuals, Karnan’s Kaattu Pechi and Jana Nayagan, grounding the movement in local memory.
Bharath Kumar, a graphic designer from Chennai, illustrated Anitha sitting on a bench against the backdrop of the 2026 protest, along with the caption ‘Puratchiyin Vithai’ (Seed of the Revolution). Explaining his choice, he reminds that everything around anti-NEET was started by Anitha in Tamil Nadu. “There are many other people as well; they sacrificed their lives, and they’re all gone. Whatever favourable thing is going to happen, they’re not going to enjoy the benefits for what they sacrificed. That particular thought made me revisit her. That’s why I kept the backdrop as a protest, and she’s sitting in the front. It’s like an unfulfilled dream. And it will always haunt us, and it should haunt us because we didn’t do this before, and they had to suffer the consequences,” he adds.
For Shweta, the Constitution became the movement’s most powerful visual metaphor. “The Constitution itself became the central symbol, representing justice, equality, and the rights guaranteed to every citizen,” she says.
Beyond the choice of symbols, artists were also straightforward on how they presented them. One deliberate effort that Chennai-based illustrator Bhavya Desai takes is “to keep the illustrations largely in black and white, with selective colour accents”. He believes that it strips away visual distractions and directs attention to actions, expressions, and emotions. Shweta similarly relies on “expressive human figures and strong visual contrasts to highlight emotions and make the message more accessible.” The artists agree that the motifs work best only if people can immediately relate to them.
Humour in handy
While the issue remained deeply serious, humour became one of the strongest tools. Sriram says memes have become “a quasi-art movement” where images are repurposed to convey new meanings. “I think the element of fun sustains the resistance and reminds us what is truly the essence of life even though it’s the toughest time.”Alisha sees this as emblematic of Gen Z’s political expression. “The art from this movement — whether it is an open-source placard, a viral meme on the CJP Instagram, or street art — shows a generation that is hyper-connected, deeply irreverent, and highly strategic. We took the digital platforms we grew up with and turned them into infrastructure for a political uprising.”
Artivism documentation
As the placards come down and protest sites empty, the artwork continues to circulate on socials, transforming them into a lasting archive of the movement. Bhavya concurs that humour doesn’t dilute an idea but makes people engage with it more deeply. He says, “This generation is comfortable expressing itself visually, collaboratively, and without waiting for perfect polish.” Alisha opines, “By creating these pieces and putting them on alternate media platforms, I am helping build a living archive of the 2026 protests. But the moment a student downloads my art, prints it on a placard, and holds it up at a protest site, that documentation becomes active ammunition. The two identities meet exactly there: when the art leaves my studio in Mumbai and becomes a tool for someone else’s defiance.”
Shweta keeps her motive simple: “The conversation is bigger than one examination; it’s about creating systems that are inclusive, compassionate, and equitable.”
Yet for artists like Bharath, the end of the demonstrations does not signal the end of the movement’s visual language. “The protest is over in Delhi. It’s over in Chennai as well. But I tell myself, ‘You can still carry the fire. You can still express’. Art can still make sense. Artists can carry the message and still draw. It will still make sense.”
His belief that “there’s nothing like a full stop for art,” echoes a long history of protest art. From the May ‘68 protests in France and the Black Panther Movement to India’s Jan Lokpal movement, and the iconic ‘I am Anna’ cap, visual symbols have often outlived the movements themselves. As Sriram puts it, “Protest art has influenced public policy all the time. Art brings people together and forces them to strip down what is unjust. It is also a record of what has happened,” citing works such as Nandalal Bose’s Haripura posters, Rabindranath Tagore’s Bharatmata, and Eugéne Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. As the anti-NEET protests and a ‘Ban NEET’ protest in Chennai recede from the streets, it may well be these images — created at the protest site or in a studio in the other part of the country — that preserve the memory of a generation’s ‘spine-ful’ resistance.
*All the creative rights belong to the original artist behind the works represented