Moscow / New Delhi, Sep 08: Before Varanasi stirs, before the temple bells begin, KM Khushbu is already at Manikarnika Ghat with her sketchbook. The pyres are burning. She is watching what the fire leaves behind.
This is where her practice begins, not in a studio, but at the most sacred threshold in the Hindu world: the cremation ghat where, for millennia, the dying have been brought to be returned to the elements. Earth, water, fire. What remains. What the eye can hold, and for how long.
Khushbu, born in Gorakhpur in 2001 and trained in painting at Banaras Hindu University before moving to printmaking at Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda, is the youngest artist in Art Incept’s programme. This year she presents new work at the 14th Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair in Moscow, represented by the New Delhi gallery.
Her prints – etchings, drypoints, woodcuts – do something unusual. They begin with the human figure and then let it go. In her recent series, bodies recede until only the elemental remains: water, earth, fire. The figure does not disappear dramatically. It simply becomes harder to hold onto, the way something seen at dawn is never quite certain. Her own words for it: jise main aur der tak dekhna chahti hoon.
This is the in-between space her work inhabits. Not life, not death. Not presence, not absence. The Bhagavad Gita calls it the moment before action; the dohas of Kabir circle it endlessly. Khushbu calls it thoda sa – a little more – the name of her ongoing series, and a phrase that contains her entire philosophy: that meaning lives in the moment just before it becomes fixed.
Her quadriptych Padmavyuha – drawn from the Mahabharata’s spiral battle formation – reimagines a military manoeuvre as a meditation on entering and leaving. The spiral is also the form of a question without an end. Who goes in? Who comes out? What changes in between?
She is 24. She has already found a place to stand that most artists spend careers looking for.
KM Khushbu studied painting at Banaras Hindu University and completed her Master’s at Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda. She works in etching, drypoint, and woodcut. Winner of the Jeram Patel Award and Manogama Grant for young printmakers. Exhibited at the CIMA Awards Show, Calcutta, and Nabh Sparsh at the National Gallery of Modern Art. She is represented by Art Incept, New Delhi.