MOKSHA
Moksha: In Love with the Cycle of Life
Paresh Maity
Presented by Snowball Studios at Art Mumbai 2025 | Mahalaxmi Racecourse | 13–16 November
To encounter the art of Paresh Maity is to witness an unbroken dialogue between medium and
emotion, feeling and spirit. Over the course of five decades, Maity has shaped one of the most
dynamic vocabularies in contemporary art in India and the world. To follow Paresh Maity’s journey
is to trace the movement of an artist in constant dialogue with change. Be it watercolour, metal or
light, each medium he touches becomes an extension of thought, a way of grasping the intangible.
His art does not seek to describe the world but to inhabit it, to find a rhythm of life and renewal in
every surface.
Born in 1965 in the historic town of Tamluk near Kolkata, Maity’s artistic journey began in the
corridors of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, and the College of Art, New
Delhi, where he graduated at the top of his class. Since then, he has held over 90 solo
exhibitions in India and abroad, with works housed in collections including the Rashtrapati
Bhavan (President’s Residence, India), British Museum, London, Rubin Museum of Art, New
York and the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
His artistic path has been one of continuous evolution from watercolour to monumental sculpture
— always guided by a fascination with the essence of light. Among his landmark achievements is
an approximately 850-foot mural at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, one of
the longest in the world completed in 2010. Recent installations such as Sound of Silence (crafted
from 4,500 brass bells) and Genesis (exhibited at Personal Structures 2024 during the Venice
Biennale) mark his growing engagement with immersive experience. Paresh Maity has received
numerous national and international awards, including the Padma Shri from the Government of
India and an honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.) last year.
It is within this continuum that Moksha emerges not as a conclusion, but as a celebration.
Presented by Snowball Studios and debuting at Art Mumbai 2025 at the Mahalaxmi
Racecourse from 13th to 16th November, Moksha embodies Maity’s evolving inquiry into the
metaphysical. Translating to “liberation” across Indian spiritual traditions, the work meditates on
impermanence and renewal, the eternal cycle through which form becomes energy, life and its
reflection.
Rising nearly fifteen feet, forged from fused brass, copper, and steel, Moksha transforms matter
into reflection. At its heart lies the tantric symbol of the kapala, the skull as a vessel of
transformation, symbolising the dissolution of ego and the passage into transcendence. Brass, with
its vibrant gleam, flows across the sombre steel contours like a metaphor. What might signify
finality becomes a portal. The skull is not an emblem of fear or death but of release, awakening
and infinite return.
Through a synthesis of sound, light, smoke and illusion, Maity transforms Moksha into a multi-
sensory immersive experience. It is not an object to be observed, but an experience to be felt, one
that invites viewers to contemplate what lies beyond the visible, to encounter continuity within
impermanence and to surrender to the vastness of being.
With Moksha, Maity returns to the essential question that runs through his life’s work; how creation
itself becomes a form of liberation. Maity speaks the timeless truth of contemporary art in a global
language; the sculpture is a meditation on being in love with the cycle of life, where every ending
folds back into a new beginning.
Don’t miss the rare opportunity to experience Paresh Maity’s monumental vision up close in
Moksha, on view at Art Mumbai 2025, Mahalaxmi Racecourse, from 13th to 16th November.