Victoria Miro is delighted to present new paintings by NS Harsha. The exhibition is accompanied by new writing on the artist by Grant Watson.

Camel and the tent times takes its title from a fable involving a merchant, his camel and the incursion of personal space. Writing about this tale in relation to NS Harsha’s paintings, Grant Watson suggests, ‘The story seems to be a warning against the danger of accommodating others. It describes a world of limited resources… and can be seen as an allegory of our times… We understand that these paintings offer a reflection on the contemporary but from a very different perspective.’

For Watson, the difference in perspective stems from the notion of a breach; in Harsha’s work not a camel usurping its master’s place in the warmth, but something ‘disruptive, comic, inevitable, reversible’ challenging the established order. As Watson explains, the central ‘metaphor is of free play, the artist's dexterity and pleasure in shuffling the decks in an experimental form of visual thinking.’

  • Selected Works

    NS Harsha, The 'I' in all of us, 2026
    NS Harsha, The 'I' in all of us, 2026
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    ‘The metaphor is of free play, the artist’s dexterity and pleasure in shuffling the decks in an experimental form of visual thinking.’

    – Grant Watson

  • NS Harsha, Camel and the tent times, 2025
    NS Harsha, Camel and the tent times, 2025
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    ‘A garland composed of figures at work, variously, cooking, laundering, potting, stirring the pot, chopping, kneading, sieving, baking, birthing, piping, scything, adorning, or simply standing and observing, all of them decorated with fruit, vegetables and foliage, like offerings at a harvest festival. A garland of the everyday, they are intertwined but apparently oblivious to the power play (that we can imagine) is going on around them.’

    – Grant Watson

     

  • NS Harsha, 'That' which dissolves labour, 2024
    NS Harsha, 'That' which dissolves labour, 2024
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    ‘…we see workers in high visibility gear sitting in rows enjoying a South Indian feast which is spread out on banana-leaf platters. Pictured en masse they present an image of labour, leisure and refreshment… Only the scene is ripped apart from top to bottom. Bisected with a vortical line that runs through the centre, a tear in space-time revealing the cosmos…’

    – Grant Watson
     

  • Camel and the tent times

    By Grant Watson

    → Read here
  • NS Harsha, Again, and again, and again, 2024
    NS Harsha, Again, and again, and again, 2024
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    ‘The title Again, and again, and again might also refer to the quality of tenacity on display. How people throughout history have persevered.’

    – Grant Watson
     
  • NS Harsha, A zephyr over a collective dream, 2023
    NS Harsha, A zephyr over a collective dream, 2023
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    ‘…the disruptive element (the breach) is an invisible wind that blows in from behind the canvas – or is it from the onlooker’s gaze? – guttering the rows of lamps, causing their flames to dip and dim but never go out. Rather than religious connotations, here the lamps represent energy…’

    – Grant Watson
     
    • NS Harsha, Workers having a break, 2024
      NS Harsha, Workers having a break, 2024
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    • NS Harsha, A chandelier of our time, 2023
      NS Harsha, A chandelier of our time, 2023
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  • NS Harsha, Digging for quarks drama at upper deck, 2024
    NS Harsha, Digging for quarks drama at upper deck, 2024
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    ‘Devoid of human figures, the arrangement could stand in for all the individuals, communities, cities and regions that spring up around sites of extraction, only to be swept away in time as capital moves on, to occupy another geography, take advantage of a different population.’

    – Grant Watson
     

  • ‘In a few strokes the artist lays down a gestural mark, then in a subsequent step, transforms this mark into a structure on which to perch agrarian workers, their tools and machinery, along with strutting egrets following in the farmer’s footsteps…’

    – Grant Watson
    • NS Harsha, Visiting Cy Twombly, 2024
      NS Harsha, Visiting Cy Twombly, 2024
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    • NS Harsha, Harvest as a water mark, 2024
      NS Harsha, Harvest as a water mark, 2024
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  • NS Harsha, Journey through water marks, 2024
    NS Harsha, Journey through water marks, 2024
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    ‘Water dropped onto canvas, painted a bluish black, then left overnight, creates a paddy field or an aquatic landscape across which to dispatch a flotilla of flickering lights.’

    – Grant Watson

     

  • NS Harsha

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