The Art Room

There is a category of Indian making that sits between craft and fine art, and has never been given its proper name.

Shadow puppetry, for instance. Tholpavakoothu from Kerala. Tholu Bommalata from Andhra Pradesh. These are not folk crafts in the hobbyist sense — they are ancient, technically demanding performance traditions, their figures cut from treated leather with the precision of a surgeon, painted with natural pigments that have not changed in centuries. The masters who practise them have spent lifetimes learning. Some are the last of their lineage.

The Art Room at Antaara exists to give these works the context they deserve — not as cultural curiosities, but as serious art objects. Framed and finished for a contemporary wall. Chosen for their visual power as much as their provenance. Works that hold their own against anything produced in a Western studio.

To hang one of these pieces is not an act of nostalgia. It is an act of discernment — a statement that you know what you are looking at, and that you chose it because it is extraordinary.

Each work is unique. Enquire to begin.