For two decades, T Venkanna’s voice has carved a unique space in contemporary Indian art, confronting taboos while remaining rooted in cultural memory. Known for his artwork where pleasure and pain, intimacy and politics, power and vulnerability collide, he is now keen on challenging the perception of printmaking as secondary to painting or sculpture. In The Human Theatre—Prints 2002-2024, he offers a landmark survey spanning over 140 etchings, drypoints, lithographs, woodcuts, and linocuts created between 2002 and 2024. “For the first time, we are showcasing nearly 145 prints,” says the 45-year-old artist.
The exhibition favors thematic continuity, revealing recurring preoccupations—eroticism and power, satire and myth, pain and transformation—that evolve yet endure across time.
Venkanna’s prints are charged with tension: grotesque forms, hybrid beings, and mythic figures that intermingle with sensuality tinged with discomfort. “Pain, pleasure, gender, power, and politics are all interconnected in my work,” he explains. “I’m not interested in sex for simple pleasure. I’m more focused on what lies beneath: how desire and discomfort coexist.” Sexuality, for Venkanna, is never decorative. Instead, it is a lens to explore humanity’s contradictions. “The body is a vessel, and sexuality is essential to life. We come from an Khajuraho, Konark, and Kama Sutra culture. Why should we feel shame in confronting the naked body?”
His influences traverse centuries and geographies: from Indian miniature paintings to Western art, personal memory to collective myth. Each print is a dialogue between instinct and structure, spontaneity and control. “Each medium has its own limits and possibilities. A small monochromatic etching creates a very different impact from a monumental oil painting layered with colour and texture. For me, they don’t compete. Each offers unique qualities, and as artists, we must explore their full potential,” he says.
His work gets renewed grounds after returning to Hyderabad, his home. “I’m closer to my family, language, and food. That sense of rootedness seeps into my work.” This homecoming, alongside the retrospective sweep of The Human Theatre, marks a moment of reflection rather than closure.