Exhibition Traces India’s Rich and Overlooked Comic-Book History

An ambitious exhibition in Bengaluru is turning the spotlight on India’s long and largely undocumented tradition of visual storytelling, challenging the popular belief that the country’s comic culture began only with familiar characters such as Chacha Chaudhary and Phantom.

Titled The Moving Line, the exhibition at the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) traces the evolution of sequential art in India across centuries. Curated by graphic novelist Amruta Patil, the exhibition brings together diverse forms of storytelling, linking traditional art practices with the printed comics, graphic novels and digital formats that followed.

The exhibition argues that India’s relationship with comics and sequential storytelling

predates the modern comic-book industry by a considerable margin. Its visual journey includes ancient hero stones, temple sculptures and reliefs, along with traditional storytelling forms such as pattachitra and kaavad. These works demonstrate how artists and storytellers used images arranged in sequences to communicate narratives long before contemporary comics emerged.

The exhibition is organised into five sections — Timeless Traditions, Early Indian Comics, Popular Comics, Feminist (r) Evolutions, and Faultlines, Fine Lines. Together, the sections explore how Indian visual narratives have changed in response to social, cultural and technological developments.

The section on early comics examines the growth of printed sequential art, while the popular comics segment focuses on characters and publications that became part of the country’s cultural memory. The exhibition also moves beyond mainstream narratives to highlight feminist comics and newer creators who have used the medium to address questions of identity, gender and society.

Contemporary forms are represented as well, with graphic novels and webcomics demonstrating how the medium has expanded beyond traditional print. The exhibition also looks towards emerging technologies, including AI-generated sequential art, suggesting that the definition of comics continues to evolve. By bringing together works from different periods and traditions, The Moving Line seeks to broaden the understanding of what constitutes an Indian comic. Rather than presenting comics as merely children’s entertainment, it places them within India’s larger history of visual communication and storytelling.