September 18 - December 16, 2023

Atul Bhalla’s work is part of Water Stories: River Goddesses, Ancestral Rites, and Climate Crisis, on view at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The exhibition illuminates the cultural, religious, and political significance of water—beyond an extractive commodity framework—and draws attention to the legacy of colonial rule and imperialism in the climate crisis.

Water Stories: Panel Discussions
October 13, 2023 | 10 AM EDT

Bhalla will be part of the Water Stories: Panel Discussions, which will bring together artists whose works are represented in the exhibition with scholars of religion, anthropology, and transnational studies to explore water’s multivalent meaning and to contemplate our current relationships with water. 

Link to exhibition (Link)
Link to panel discussion (Link)

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study 
Harvard University 
10 Garden Street 
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

June 2022 - June 2023 

Atul Bhalla is part of a group of artists commissioned by Khoj International Artists’ Association to develop work around the expeditionary weather station 28th Parallel North. The station has been set up as part of the World Weather Network - a global alliance of 28 art agencies formed in response to the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. 

Link to project (Link)

28th Parallel North
World Weather Network

December 10, 2022 – June 11, 2023

Atul Bhalla’s work is included in the exhibition Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India at at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition foregrounds landscapes of India, real and reimagined, as powerful means of examining environmental and social issues concerning us all. Through still and moving image, seriality, and portraiture, five leading contemporary artists explore rapidly changing natural and built environments in India, from riverbanks, ancient forests, and city streets to surreal symbolic settings.

Link to event (Link)

National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
1050 Independence Ave SW
Washington, DC 20560

March 18 - May 30th, 2022

Atul Bhalla’s work is included in the exhibition Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water at The Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition explores the many ways artists around the world have engaged with the theme of water, featuring over 80 works of art from 16 countries and 7 Native American tribes. The works date from ancient to contemporary times and include video, sculpture, textiles, paintings, ceramics, and photographs.

Our Blue Planet is a collaboration among three SAM curators: Barbara Brotherton, Curator of Native American Art; Natalia Di Pietrantonio, Assistant Curator of South Asian Art; and Pamela McClusky, Curator of African and Oceanic Art.

Link to event (Link)

Seattle Art Museum
1300 1st Ave
Seattle, WA 98101
USA

September 20-23, 2021

The Department of Art and Performing Arts at Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR, presents a 4-day International Conference on ‘Knowledge Production and Research in Art/s Practices’, bringing together highly distinguished artists, educators, and art researchers, from around the world. The conference will be held from 20-23 September 2021.

Atul Bhalla is Professor and Head of the Department of Art & Performing Art, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, at Shiv Nadar University.

Link to Event (Link)
Shiv Nadar University
NH-91, Tehsil Dadri
Gautam Buddha Nagar UP 201314

Atul Bhalla is included in the book, Running Falling Flying Floating Crawling, published by Saint Lucy Books, 2020 and edited by Mark Alice Durant, with contributions by Jean Dykstra, Cig Harvey, Marvin Heiferman, Jennifer Blessing, Susan Bright, & David Campany.

Running Falling Flying Floating Crawling is a loose compendium of photographs and texts that picture, examine, explore, and/or suggest the human body in states of abandon, helplessness, terror, subjugation, serenity, and transcendence.

October 22, 2020 at 12:10PM (EST)

Atul Bhalla is Cornell University's South Asia Program's Virtual Artist-in-Residence. His Artist Talk, "You Always Step into the Same River," will focus on his preoccupation with all aspects of water-- accessibility, sustainability, it's political, religious, and historical entanglements etc.-- in the urban environment of Delhi, India.

Link to Event (Link)
Cornell University, South Asia Program

January 21 – February 2, 2020

Atul Bhalla's work is in We are Still Alive: Strategies in Surviving the Anthropocene, curated by Dr. Arshiya Lokhandwala for the Shalini Passi Foundation. "We are Still Alive in the sculpture garden of IIC is an exhibition by Delhi artists who have experienced the poor air / water quality, congestion, pollution in the city, change in the temperature and water levels. The artists address these issues as a public art project. Each work provokes viewers to think about these important issues that effect their health, food and quality of life. The exhibition is a shout out to the public to mobilize themselves to bring the required changes in this critical crisis moment while We are Still Alive."

Link to Event Page (Link)
Mash Sculptural Space, India International Centre
New Delhi

September 29, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Atul Bhalla’s Immersion will be a part of RAW: Craft, Commodity, and Capitalism. The exhibition features nine contemporary artists who work with a range of commodities as artistic material to explore the historical and contemporary effects of global capitalism. Their deliberate use of these materials acknowledges the complex and enduring legacy of capitalistic structures, such as slavery, colonialism, and industrialization, and their human and environmental impact.

Link to Event Page (Link)
RAW: Craft, Commodity, and Capitalism
Craft Contemporary
5814 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
USA

September 6 – October 11, 2019

Photographic works by Atul Bhalla and Vivan Sundaram are featured in A Time for Farewells. Curated by Premjish Achari, the exhibit "[casts] aside the constraints of traditional notions and existing power structures, the artists of the exhibition present sculptures, drawings, videos, and photographic works that collectively imagine a future radically different from our present, in the hope that the act of imagining can be an impetus for change."

Link to Event Page (Link)
A Time for Farewells
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College
370 Lancaster Avenue
Haverford, PA 19041
USA

February 22-March 24, 2019

Works by Atul Bhalla and Vivan Sundaram are on exhibit in the 2019 Chennai Photo Biennale, the second edition of this city-wide celebration of photography.

Link to Event Page (Link)
Chennai Photo Biennale
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

September 10-21, 2018

As part of Watershed, a multi-disciplinary program that "enmeshes arts and science," Atul Bhalla's presents You always step into the same river: Looking for lost water (Explorations at the Cradle). Fully utilizing the echo-y atmosphere of the Atrium in The Chamber of Mines Building, Bhalla's installation combines photographs, performative photographs, video with sculptural and textual interventions, and performances.

Bhalla has been involved in projects which highlight the use/misuse of water as well as its religious and mythical significance in his hometown of New Delhi. His work for Watershed will examine water as a repository of history, meaning and myth within the context of Johannesburg gold mining, taking references of land and water relations from historical (oral and non-oral) contexts.

“I’ll also attempt to explore how people live and survive in and around the dumps, developing local language/s and words for operations and acts that may not have existed pre-mining days. I intend to use Zulu as the language of communication within the work,” says Bhalla.

Link to Event Page (Link)
Chamber of Mines Building
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, 2000
South Africa

March 10th - April 22nd, 2018

sepiaEYE artists Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Atul Bhalla, and Serena Chopra will be a part of the FotoFest 2018 Biennial. The theme for this year is INDIA - Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art focusing on 48 Contemporary Photographic and New Media Artists from India. Organized by Lead Curator Sunil Gupta and FotoFest Executive Director Steven Evans, FotoFest 2018 will be one of the largest exhibitions of contemporary photography by artists of Indian origin to be presented in the United States.

Link to Event (Link)
INDIA - Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art
Houston, Texas
United States

31 August – 17 December 2017

Atul Bhalla's photographs from his exploratory walks along the waterways of India will be featured in the group exhibition, Unfiltered at The Benton.

Unfiltered: An Exhibition About Water
The William Benton Museum of Art
245 Glenbrook Road, Storrs, CT

26 August – 1 October 2017

Works by Atul Bhalla and Beatrice Pediconi (alongisde various other artists) will be featured in A Preview to Desolation curated by Premjish.

A Preview to Desolation
Italian Embassy Cultural Centre New DelhiChanakyapuri, New Delhi

13 August - 19 September 2017

Curated by Gayatri Singha, Part Narratives showing at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai features the work of sepiaEYE artists Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Atul Bhalla and Nandita Raman.

Part Narratives
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, 
Veer Mata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (Rani Baug) 

13 March – 2 April, 2017

Bhalla’s photographic installation is featured in Kailash Cartographies, at The New School’s Aronson Gallery. An exhibition of artists from India, China, Nepal, and the US, Kailash Cartographiesexplores conceptions of sacred geographies: holy spaces, pilgrimages, and intersections with secular, personal, and political spaces and borders.

“Atul Bhalla’s photographic installation, titled Contemplating Drowning also considers the tragic pollution of the Bagmati river, but through the figure of Shiva, who is thought to create and destroy the universe in the blink of the eye. Bhalla juxtaposes the brass monkeys from the Golden Temple in Kathmandu with images of oil lamps, that appear like spirits which may be snuffed out by the river, photographed here at dusk.”

Kailash Cartographies LINK
Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries
66 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10003

27 June – 6 August 2017

sepiaEYE artists Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Atul Bhalla, and Nandita Raman are amongst a dozen artists in a wonderful multi-disciplinary show curated by Gayatri Sinha. Part Narratives will be on view through January 21, 2017 at Bikaner House, New Delhi.

7 – 21 January 2017
Part Narratives
Curated by Gayatri Sinha
Bikaner House, New Delhi

Through January 20, 2017

Atul Bhalla’s photography, amongst that of others, is included in Ho~ArT, at State Gallery of Art as part of the Krishnakriti Annual Festival of Art & Culture.

Through January 20, 2017
Ho~ArT
State Gallery of Art, Hyderabad

Review: The New Indian Express “Contemporary Canvases Come Alive” 12 Jan 2017 LINK 
Read Article (PDF)

About the Festival: LINK

March 31 – April 14, 2016

Atul Bhalla’s audio visual work, Adrift (On Dvaipayana) will be on view at the Harvard Art Museums from March 31 through Thursday, April 14.

April 23 – June 2, 2015

Works by Atul Bhalla alongside works by Prerna Bishnoi, Cop Shiva, Archana Hande, Reena Kallat, Nandita Kumar, Prajakta Potnis, Sumakshi Singh, and Surekha will be on display in this exhibition focusing on “exchange and collaboration between the artists, their subjects, and the public.” Bhalla will be participating in a discussion panel with Indian and Swiss artists on Thursday, 30 April, 6:30 pm.

Link to Event (Link)
One and One Make Eleven: Contemporary Art From IndiaKunsthaus Langenthal
Langenthal
Switzerland

February 27-28, 2015

On Saturday, February 28th, 2015, Bhalla will be a participating in the panel, “Contemporary South Asian Art: Global Circulations and Critical Responses” in the Global South Asia: Publics and Politics Symposium at New York University.Link to Event Page (Link)
Global South Asia: Publics and Politics Symposium New York University
Institute for Public Knowledge
New York

May 21 – June 21, 2014

Atul Bhalla’s Submerged Again and Yamuna Walk and Annu Palakunnathu Matthew’s ongoing series, Spatial Memories: Freshly-Cut Houses will be on view as part of the Sharjah Art Museum’s photography exhibit, “The Other and Me.” The Other and Me
Sharjah Art Museum
UAE

March 21 – September 14, 2014

Works from Bhalla’s Yamuna Walk are featured in the massive multi-disciplinary exhibition which “defines the soul of Galicia.” Fresh Water / Agua Doce is currently on view at the Gaia Center Museum in Santiago de Compestela, Spain.

Fresh Water / Agua Doce
Gaia Center Museum
Santiago de Compestela
Spain

March 19 – April 17, 2014

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Chemould Prescott Road gallery held a series of five exhibitions curated by brilliant Geeta Kapur. The fifth and final show titled, Aesthetic Bind | Floating World featured Atul Bhalla’s Yamuna Evening-III. The blog, Mumbai Boss, posted a lively review of the exhibition.

Aesthetic Bind | Floating World
Chemould Prescott Road
Mumbai

Read the Review (PDF)

February 8 – March 30, 2014

Atul Bhalla’s Yamuna Walk will be featured in a group exhibition, Walk On. Bhalla’s Yamuna Walk series will be exhibited alongside works by artists Marina Abramovic, Julian Opie, Bruce Nauman, Sophie Calle, and others who have explored and created works revolving around the artist on a journey. Previously exhibited at the Pitshangor Manor Museum (March 26 – May 6, 2013).

Link to Event (Link)
Midlands Art Centre
Birmingham

November 12, 2013

Atul Bhalla’s book, “What will be my defeat?” grew out of Project Y, a public art and outreach project initiated by the Ministry of Culture, Hamburg. Centered on the idea of creating ecological and sustainable rivers in cities, the project was held almost simultaneously in the cities of Delhi and Hamburg between October and November 2011. Bhalla created a series of works around cross cultural ideas of ecology as basic elements of our identity, through a series of photographs, and text adapted from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, in the form of questions. These images were shown on the project boat in Hamburg. Published and edited by Nina Kalenbach, Till Krause, and Ravi Agarwal (Free River Zone, Hamburg, 2012.)

October 12, 2013 – January 5, 2014

The art walk in Liège brings together photography, video and installations made in this decade, supplemented by new works. The artists draw inspiration from India’s mythology and rich symbolism to create very poetic works. These often refer to the populations living alongside rivers and the way they deal with water scarcity and pollution. Curated by Gayatri Sinha, the exhibition will feature works by Atul Bhalla and Vivan Sundaram amongst others. The artists explore the theme in the European context of a city on a river. The walk takes place in and around the Grand Curtius, the starting point, on the banks of the Meuse River.

Link to Event (Link)
Art Walk: Water Europalia India
Liège

May 31 - December 16, 2012

Critical Mass at Tel Aviv Museum of Art is the first major show that will expose the Israeli public to the thriving contemporary Indian art scene. An exhibition of Indian art in Israel holds special interest in a local context, due to the range of affinities between the two countries and due to the growing interest of Israelis in India and in Indian culture. The preoccupation with conflicted identity and multifaceted social and political reality is similarly shared by both cultural fields and seems to serve as a significant catalyst for artistic production. Bhalla’s photographic diptych, I Was Not Waving I was Drowning, was included in this exciting exhibition curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and Rotem Ruff

Link to Event (Link)
Critical Mass
Tel Aviv Museum of Art