Mayank Kumar Shyam

Mayank Kumar Shyam is the son of the famous painter Jangarh Singh Shyam (1960s–2001). He was born in 1987 in Madya Pradesh, India. Mayank’s work was exhibited for the first time in Calcutta when he was nineteen years old. Born in 1987 in Bhopal, Mayank is one of the rare Gond painters whose art is not exclusively linked to his local culture. His work comprises aspects of innovation and Gond tradition. Mayank’s work is highly promising. It underlines the fact that, with regard to these young Indian artists, whose culture is so very different from the one that rules the contemporary art world, it is essential that we look on art with as much insight as possible, and that our contemplation of works from other cultures must distance itself from the view, which is still all too present, that the art we are looking at is purely folkloric.