In an upcoming book on artist Akbar Padamsee, cultural theorist and curator Nancy Adajania evokes a series of monochrome 'Heads' made in watercolour and water-soluble crayons. Rather than full forms, they expose their skeletal systems — a grid made of fine lines, like scaffolding — that Padamsee calls schema. The heads are exposed, but still hard to read. Adajania writes, "Are these faces at all?" one might ask. Are they not star maps, or a Biblical plague manifested as a swarm of locusts…?’ Padamsee’s response to her musings was, 'I am not drawing a man or a woman.'

Nancy Adajania, Akbar Padamsee and Priyasri Patodia PIC/ Priyasri Art Gallery