Indian artist NS Harsha won the third Artes Mundi prize in 2008. He is best known for his miniatures, large scale installations and community projects.
His work reveals a political commentary within a framework of Indian miniature painting, the modern Indian narrative tradition and popular art.
The figures in Harsha's delicate, sly and playful world are almost invariably focused on an event, animated by a mutual curiosity, pointing out something that is odd, incongruous or comically strange. For the viewer the wit resides as much in the scale of the depictions as it does in the finely summarised telling detail of the vignette.
11 December 2008
