An ordinary street, a familiar animal, a passing face, or a fleeting moment can easily disappear into the rush of everyday life. For late artist Srinivas Bobbili (1979-2024), however, these seemingly insignificant details were worth pausing for. Born in Vijayawada, his practice grew out of observing the world around him and turning those observations into drawings, paintings, and visual records of lived experience. His retrospective, Srinivas Bobbili: A Biography of the Everyday, at Dhi Artspace brings together this intimate way of looking at life. The exhibition is on view till September 29.
For Bhargavi Gundala, founder and director of Dhi Artspace, the exhibition is deeply personal. Srinivas was not only an artist associated with the gallery but also a close friend, with whom she had studied, shared studio space, and worked on art camps. Following his death in 2024, the idea of bringing his work together became a way to remember him and introduce his practice to audiences. “He was extremely observant as an artist, he saw everything and everyday life as part of a creation and documented everything. Whatever he saw, he would document and archive it. He was a very silent person and expressed through art,” says Bhargavi, describing the quality that perhaps best defines his work. That habit of looking closely resulted in a remarkably varied body of work. Srinivas worked across drawing, watercolour, acrylic, oil, etching, woodcut and sculpture, with drawing remaining central to his practice.
Curator Amit Kumar Vishwakarma says the process of putting the exhibition together took more than six months of intensive preparation. “We have more than 2,500 pieces, so selecting which pieces should be showcased took time. The entire team was on it, and then we selected works through different styles, time periods, moods, and mediums, allowing visitors to see how his visual language shifted with material, mood, and subject,” he shares.
Srinivas’s own words echo that philosophy: “Art is not just about trade and money. Art is all about change and a new experience; it is something to be shared with society and people at large. It is something that everybody should enjoy in their daily lives.”
At Dhi Artspace, his visual diary now becomes a shared one, encouraging visitors to slow down, look again, and perhaps notice the poetry hiding in their own everyday lives.