One morning in Jaipur’s old town, artist Adébayo Bolaji found himself staring at a weather-worn building, long stripped of its original purpose. A banana vendor had claimed its doorstep. “It was like history and present need were negotiating space,” he recalls. For the London-based British artist of Nigerian descent, the moment encapsulated what he came to India seeking: Not spectacle, but survival; not monuments, but meaning.

Currently on view at Nature Morte in Colaba, What the Flame Could Never Burn is Bolaji’s first solo exhibition in India — an incandescent series of paintings created during a month-long residency in Jaipur earlier this year. Known internationally for his lyrical visual language, where allegory, abstraction, and theatre intertwine, Bolaji arrived in India with no fixed agenda. “I chose to stay mostly in Jaipur and let the place reveal itself slowly,” he shares.

Adebayo Bolaji