What on earth were two young artists conveying via the depiction of wild creatures on the heads of humans?
The artworks executed in the woodcut medium were on display at the recent Annual Art Exhibition 2026 of the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi staged at the Punjab Kala Bhawan. A providential sighting of a leopard in broad daylight materialised in March 2025 in the reeds clustering the rivulet of Jainti check-dam north of PGIMER. Because it had been tempted beyond discretion by the presence of young calves of feral cattle, that leopard revealed itself.
In the words of Ravinder Sharma, the articulate art academic and Akademi vice-chairman: “Every brushstroke, sculpture, print or installation embodies an artist’s intimate dialogue with life, inviting us to pause, reflect and rediscover the beauty that surrounds us. Art is not merely an arrangement of colours and forms but a perennial source of values and virtues that inspire generations to embrace empathy, imagination and cultural consciousness. If a roving leopard is spotted by chance, the observer/villager may not have a camera/cellphone or be close enough to record the ‘guldar’ (cat of a rosette mosaic). It was captured for posterity on a cellphone by Sneh Sekhon. But such records are few and far between, apart from those yielded by 24×7 camera traps.
