‘Entrapped’: Somya Satsangi’s solo exhibition

An exhibition titled Entrapped, featuring paintings by Somya Satsangi, will be held at AIFACS from April 18 to 23.

Emerging from a childhood shaped by books and art, Satsangi’s painterly practice draws upon a personal vocabulary of symbols and metaphors. Her works are marked by recurring figures, expansive skies and seas, and layered spaces that evoke a sense of contradictory presence. The emotional tenor of her paintings reflects what Victorian writer John Ruskin termed ‘pathetic fallacy’ — the projection of inner feelings onto the external world.

The exhibition brings together works that traverse forests, theatres, fields, ponds and domestic interiors, creating atmospheres that oscillate between solitude and discovery. A central thread in Satsangi’s practice is what she describes as “communion without community”, where vast, open spaces become sites of both alienation and epiphany.

Animals and birds feature prominently as symbolic extensions of the human condition, reflecting a fraught relationship with nature. While birds suggest freedom, their imminent caging underscores a persistent sense of entrapment. In these imagined worlds, animals appear clothed, women occupy barren trees, and ibises emerge as recurring motifs.

Figures such as the nun, drawn from the artist’s childhood in a Catholic school, embody ideas of discipline and detachment, while the penguin appears in a parallel visual register, creating a dialogue between the human and natural realms. Across the works, boundaries between characters and their environments blur, reinforcing themes of belonging and estrangement.

Rife with personal symbolism, Entrapped presents a body of work that makes visible the artist’s inner world, navigating the tensions between isolation and connection, and the possibility of harmony within disjunction.

When: April 18–23, 2026

Where: AIFACS, New Delhi