It was an encounter with images captured by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes that reshaped the trajectory of Sujata Bajaj’s body of work. In her paintings, she responds to the immensity of the universe, translating cosmic scale and insignificance into abstractions developed over five years. The works appear at first like storms of light—fields of incandescent colour and drifting matter, canvases where turbulence opens into sudden calm, and where chromatic heat gives way to the suggestion of absolute darkness. Presented by Alliance Française and Institut français under the patronage of the French Embassy in India, Spacescapes marks Bajaj’s return to New Delhi after over 10 years. In 2016, her exhibition titled Ganapati was presented at the India Habitat Centre, showcasing abstract paintings and sculptures inspired by Lord Ganesha.
“There is so much contained in space,” she says. “It starts with the understanding of the fact that we are so insignificant in front of its immensity.” From these contrasts, abstraction became not an escape from reality but a method of metabolising it. “Hubble and James Webb state that colours are largely computer creations. It gave me the license to use my own imagination,” says the artist, who is primarily based in Paris, but also spends time working in Pune and Norway. This freedom manifests as a palette that traverses incandescent reds, gossamer blues and almost metallic greens—tones that feel plausible yet invented. Although Bajaj has spent decades devoted to abstraction, the series marks a subtle shift in her approach. “Before Spacescapes, my abstracts were produced only in my mind,” she reflects. Rather than depicting nebulae and galaxies, Bajaj allows them to enter her studio as provocations, generating what she calls a “dialogue between me and events in the outer world.” The exhibition also includes a hybrid digital work through which Bajaj explores the dimension of motion. “Technology and art shouldn’t be seen as incompatible,” she says.
Bajaj’s ability to sustain wonder after five decades of practice is rooted in restless curiosity rather than stylistic consistency. “I never think my career has reached its final destination,” she says. “I’m constantly curious about what would be the next step, how to push my limits a bit further.” Spacescapes seems to carry within it the promise of continuation rather than closure. If the works in the exhibition evoke astronomical matter, they also evoke the states of mind that such matter induces: awe, fear, minuscule selfhood, exhilaration at scale, and the disquieting awareness that all things are in motion, including ourselves. In Bajaj’s hands, the cosmos does not remain distant—it becomes a sensory terrain, and ultimately, a way of thinking.