“My endeavour while creating these images on the canvas is to make them generic. However, the fact that the violence is so close and tangible is disturbing,” says Santosh. The artist’s haunting image of Your Terrorist our Freedom Fighter finely depicts his thoughts. The fact that the reasons behind such attacks have been ignored, surfaces here.

New media artist Shilpa Gupta feels it’s just a matter of time before the violence reached our city. “We constantly say that terrorism does not have a religion. But it is this very attitude that has led to the eruption of violence. Our politicians have to address the reason why people are doing this, you can’t turn the other way and not listen to the actual problem,” says Gupta, whose works have recently been based out of Jammu and Kashmir.

Ironically, while on the Dal Lake in Kashmir, Gupta had noticed that many of the house boats were named after places like New York City, Sydney and Mumbai, which were meant to be peaceful. “It is so ironic that these places were considered to be peaceful,” says Gupta.

She reiterates that art may exist in a “Utopia”—a gallery space hidden from the public eye—but it doesn’t neglect its task of “seeing and showing such turbulent incidents”.