There is a particular hush that falls over a room when everyone in it is looking at the same flower. At Padma, Kanam's first gathering, held in Chennai in March 2026, that flower was the lotus, and nine artists had been asked to bring theirs.

On the face of it, a modest brief. The lotus is perhaps the most familiar form in the whole of South Asian art. It holds up goddesses, blooms across temple ceilings, and has been embroidered, carved, cast and painted onto almost anything that stands still long enough. Familiarity of that order is a challenge in itself. Ask nine artists to answer a symbol this old, and one learns a great deal about each of them.

A garden, and a princess

Alka Choudhary answered twice over. Her Noble Lady stands in a lotus garden with her wings open, hummingbirds about her and, rather wonderfully, a pair of blue shoes: a portrait of a self-made woman, and of growth through adversity. Beside her hung Princess Padma, who awaits a prince her poet has described so vividly that she already knows he is the one. Winged cats circle her; a crescent moon crowns her golden hair. In the artist's own lovely phrase, she is not waiting nervously. She is waiting beautifully.

Aswatha took the older reading. Awakening, a commanding oil some four feet by five, returns to the lotus as the scriptures know it: a flower that grows in dark water and yet opens, clean and radiant, above the surface. It is a painting about rising through difficulty, and it has the stillness of something that already has.

Familiar as it is, the lotus proved to have a great deal left to say.

The feeling of the lotus

Tanvi Kulshreshtha gave the evening its title in miniature. Padmanubhuti, a round canvas three feet across, means something close to the feeling of the lotus, and that is precisely what it offers: textured buds in shades of lotus pink, touched with gold, less a picture of the flower than of its presence. Her Beauty of Becoming went further, drawing the lotus in black and white, the black lines standing for the mud and the colour for all that rises out of it.

Elsewhere, the lotus kept distinguished company. Shirin Watwani's Tridevi brought together Durga's tiger, Saraswati's swan and Lakshmi's lotus: courage, knowledge and abundance in a single trinity. Sujata Achrekar's Divine Humanity paintings, drawn from the avatars from Matsya to Krishna, asked whether divinity is distant or something a person might hope to understand. Smruthi Gargi Eswar's Lakshmi moved through a cosmos of Asuras and Devas, desired by all and possessed by none.

Priyanka Aelay painted imagined ecosystems that might lie beneath the sea or somewhere beyond the sky. Bhoomika Dange seated a woman among blooming lotuses, still and composed. Rani Banerjee's Embraced Within caught a woman in her element, choosing her own pace.

And then, the bronzes

Alka's goddesses held the centre of the room: Shree, Saraswati, and Mahamayuri, a figure a little over two feet tall and weighing more than twenty-six kilograms, which is to say a presence rather than an ornament. Paintings and bronze do not always sit easily together. At Padma they seemed to have been waiting for one another.

What the evening showed, in the end, was that a single, very old form, placed in the hands of nine contemporary artists, can still surprise us. The works from that night now live in the collection, and may be viewed there at leisure.

Some painters travel a long way to find their subject. Alka Choudhary appears to have been born beside hers. She grew up in Rajasthan among women dressed, as a matter of course, in exquisite attire and ornament, and she was captivated early by their grace and grandeur. Painting since her teenage years, she has spent the time since turning that fascination into a figure entirely her own.

Collectors know her as the Dreaming Lady: a woman who radiates power, elegance, vitality and, unapologetically, glamour, and who wears a pair of imaginary wings. The wings are the point. In Alka's telling they stand for freedom of choice.

For Alka, painting unveils the inner beauty every woman carries.

A portrait in red

The Noble Lady, painted in acrylic on a canvas of three feet by four, is perhaps the clearest statement of the idea. She is a self-made woman, born of the artist's reflections on strength, resilience and quiet confidence. Every detail carries weight: the red for visibility, the hummingbirds for resilience, the blue shoes for self-arrival, the lotus garden for growth through adversity. Her open wings say the rest: that women are bound by no ceiling at all.

Princess Padma is the same lady in a more romantic mood. Her gown of silver work catches every light; her hair is the gold of a setting sun, crowned with a crescent moon; winged cats keep her company. She waits for a prince her poet has described so vividly that she already knows him. It is a painting with a smile in it, and a rather knowing one.

Into three dimensions

The lady does not stay on the canvas. Alka is a sculptor as well as a painter, and her figures step quite naturally into the round: Shree (Laxmi) with wings carries the signature straight into sculpture, while My Angel and Angel with bird are small enough to hold in two hands, and all the more intimate for it.

Alka believes that art flows through her like a second soul. Spend an afternoon among her ladies and the phrase begins to sound less like a flourish than a plain description. Eleven of her works are presently with Kanam.

A painting meets you face on. A sculpture asks you to walk around it, and in that small courtesy lies most of its charm.

Bronze has a long and distinguished history in the south of India. The great Chola figures, cast more than a thousand years ago, remain among the most admired objects in any museum fortunate enough to hold one. To live with a bronze, even a thoroughly contemporary one, is to join a very old conversation.

A presence, not an ornament

The bronzes by Alka Choudhary in the collection make the point by their sheer bearing. Shree stands nineteen inches tall and weighs twenty-four kilograms; Mahamayuri, at twenty-seven inches, weighs a little over twenty-six. These are pieces with gravity, in every sense, and they ask to be placed accordingly: on a ledge of stone, a sturdy plinth, or a console that can take the weight without complaint.

At the other end of the scale sit Urvashi, Angel with bird and My Angel, each well under a foot tall. Small bronzes are the collector's secret. They reward being seen up close, on a library shelf or a writing desk, where the hand is tempted to reach out.

A painting meets you face on. A sculpture asks you to walk around it.

Light, and time

Bronze is at its finest in raking light: a lamp set low and to one side, or the last of the afternoon falling across a room. Watch the same figure at breakfast and again after dinner, and it will seem to have changed its expression. Given room on every side, it will change again as you pass.

It also improves with keeping. The surface of a bronze deepens slowly over the years, gathering a patina that no workshop can hurry. One is, in a sense, never quite finished acquiring it.

Patience, then, is the whole of the matter: the patience of the maker, the patience of the metal, and the patience of the person who lives with it. It is a rather civilised thing to ask of anyone.

The rooms one remembers are seldom the most crowded. They tend, instead, to have one thing in them worth remembering: a painting over a fireplace, a bronze in a stairwell, a canvas that greets you before anyone else does.

There is a quiet confidence in giving a single work a wall of its own. It says the owner chose it, and chose it for good reason. It lets the piece speak at its natural volume. And it spares a room the faintly anxious air of a collection trying to be seen all at once.

Choose the piece, then the wall

It is tempting to begin with the empty wall and go looking for something to fill it. We would suggest the opposite. Begin with a work that moves you, then find the place where it can be seen properly. A square canvas from Sujata Achrekar's Divine Humanity series, with its hypnotic faces, will hold a drawing room without ever raising its voice. Aswatha's Awakening, at four feet by five, will command a double-height hall. Tanvi Kulshreshtha's round Padmanubhuti will soften a room built entirely of straight lines.

Begin with a work that moves you, then find the place where it can be seen properly.

A few practical courtesies

Hang a painting so that its centre sits at roughly eye level, around five feet from the floor, rather than lifted towards the cornice. Above a sofa or a console, let the work span something near two thirds of the furniture's width. Keep canvases out of strong direct sun, and light them warmly. Leave generous space around the piece; the wall is part of the frame.

Then live with it for a season. See it in the morning, at dusk, with guests and without. A good piece reveals itself slowly, and the pleasure of that is very much the point.

Kanam's collection turns each season, which is rather the idea. The room may change around you. The piece you choose, you keep.

Every family has its well-worn stories, told so often that everyone knows the ending. And every family has the other kind: the tale a grandmother told only once, half-remembered, never quite written down. Smruthi Gargi Eswar paints the second kind.

A painter, graphic artist and storyteller based in Bangalore, she trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and at Chitrakala Parishath. Her work has been shown internationally, in Berlin and New York among other cities, and across India. Her particular gift is to revive hidden and forgotten mythologies, and to do so in a thoroughly contemporary visual language.

Desired by all, possessed by none

Her Lakshmi is a case in point. In a cosmos of Asuras and Devas, the goddess of fortune moves freely, desired by all and possessed by none, reminding gods and mortals alike how fleeting fortune can be, until at last she finds her balance beside Vishnu, who alone understands her true nature.

Lakshmi moves freely, desired by all and possessed by none.

It is hard to think of a more elegant image for Kanam itself: a moment, beautifully held, and then allowed to move on.

A memory of the body

Her untitled oil in the collection goes further inward. It speaks of a memory of the mind and a memory of the body: oceans, winds, an eternal flame, and the soil that makes us. At its heart is a lotus, standing for our place in a greater unfolding that began long before any of us, with each of us, somehow, at its centre.

Smruthi's paintings ask to be read slowly, as the best stories always have. They repay the attention handsomely.

People sometimes ask how a work finds its way onto Kanam. The honest answer is: slowly, and by hand.

Every piece in the collection is chosen by Rajani herself. That is a simple sentence with a great deal of looking behind it. Before anything is shown, there is the work to be seen in person wherever possible, the artist to be met, and a long conversation about where the work comes from and where it might go.

A collective first

Kanam thinks of itself as a collective before a collection. An artist who joins is welcomed personally, introduced by name, and credited properly wherever their work appears. Their story is told in their own terms, with the particulars that matter: the city they paint in, the materials they favour, the ideas they keep returning to.

Every piece in the collection is chosen by Rajani herself.

Seen properly

Once a work is chosen, it is photographed with care, measured exactly and described plainly, so that a collector in Chennai, London or New York can understand it as well as one standing in front of it. Many works then have their first evening at one of Kanam's gatherings, where artists, collectors and other disciplines share a room and the conversation is allowed to run long.

And because the collection turns with each season, no artist is ever simply filed away. Their work is shown, and seen, and then makes room for the next moment.

Artists who would like to be considered are most welcome to write to us at artists@kanam.world.