Exhibitions

A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling

25 July – 15 November 2026 · Axis & Citi Bank Galleries, MAP, Bengaluru

Carved into the Someshwara temple in Halasuru, just across the city, is a story told in stone — one of Bengaluru’s own earliest examples of a narrative meant to be read in sequence. A line cut into temple stone, and a line drawn on a screen last year, are doing the same work: carrying a story, and asking to be followed. 

Curated by the artist Amruta Patil, A Moving Line gathers more than 250 works to trace how India has told stories in sequence across fifteen hundred years. In this exhibition we witness both the creation of new visual identities and the evolution of a nation through a vast body of works across time and space. Here, the kaavad and pattachitra scroll sit alongside Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle. Chacha Chaudhary meets the Phantom, while contemporary graphic novels and web comics continue conversations that began centuries ago. While they may seem like unlikely companions, together they tell a much larger story on the history of visual storytelling in India.The title speaks to this movement, a progression, and to the capacity of a line to move us, physically and metaphorically. It nods, too, to the marks artists use to convey motion, emotion and sound within an otherwise flat, two-dimensional medium.

Folio from a Kalpasutra manuscript (Queen Trishala’s dreams)
Western India (Possibly Gujarat)
16th Century
Opaque watercolour and gold on paper
H. 11 cm, W. 26.2 cm

As generations, technologies and societies change, so does the medium and its use. Through all of these stories the exhibition asks: how have they shaped us, and what might the future of visual storytelling look like? Along the way it holds the loud, beloved comics of the newsstand beside Bengal’s early satirical strips, the feminist and queer storytelling of makers and collectives, and a digital present in which the ecological emergency is named and machines have begun to draw alongside us.

Rooted in MAP’s belief that art should be accessible to everyone, A Moving Line builds access into the exhibition rather than beside it. Expect tactile and audio responses to some of the Amar Chitra Katha stories, sensory objects, Indian Sign Language content, an audio guide, described content, and books to browse in the gallery. A gallery facilitator will be on hand to give walkthroughs, and a small education intervention invites visitors to build their own comic.

A Moving Line is accompanied by a publication with an introduction by Amruta Patil and newly commissioned essays and graphic narratives that carry these questions further.

Follow a single line from a temple wall in Bengaluru to the touchscreen, and watch a country tell its stories.

This exhibition is curated by the artist Amruta Patil, in partnership with the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image (CIBDI), Angoulême. It is supported by the Embassy of France in India and the French Institute in India within the larger framework of the Desibel project — an Indo-French initiative that brings together creators, institutions and communities to shape the future of comics and visual storytelling within India’s animation, visual effects, gaming, comics, and extended reality (AVGC-XR) sector. A version of the exhibition will travel to Angoulême in January 2027 for the opening of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, marking a milestone in the history of Indian comics in France.