From Bhubaneswar's marketplaces to Niyamgiri hills and the New Parliament, her art lives beyond the gallery - in community, ecology and everyday life
Bhubaneswar, Sept 11, 2026: In a time when contemporary art is often limited to gallery spaces, Bhubaneswar-based artist Satyabhama Majhi has spent over two decades taking art to the people - to market lanes, village walls, hill slopes, public spaces and school classrooms.
A contemporary visual artist, curator, social activist, community art practitioner and Secretary of Sasatwa Foundation, Majhi works across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, mixed media and public art. Her true medium is connection - between people and place, memory and modernity, tradition and today.
Early Life: The Market as First Studio
Majhi grew up in Bhubaneswar, observing everyday life around her father's small shop in a local market. Vendors bargaining, festivals, neighbourhood ties, animals, the constant transformation of the city - this everyday theatre became her first art school.
As Bhubaneswar urbanised rapidly, old neighbourhoods and collective memories began to disappear. Majhi began archiving them. Her paintings are not portraits of one person, but crowded social landscapes of many people, animals, plants, buildings and rituals - a visual memory of a changing city.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Traditional Art, but her practice soon evolved into a multidisciplinary language.
The Niyamgiri Dialogue: 12 Years with Dongaria Kondh
The most defining chapter of her practice is her more than a decade-long engagement with the Dongaria Kondh community of the Niyamgiri hills.
It was not a project of documentation, but of listening and learning. She studied their livelihood, spirituality, their reverence for Niyam Raja, and their intimate relationship with forest and land.
This changed her art materially. Inspired by indigenous wall painting, she began making colours from the land itself - chalk stone, charcoal, turmeric, geru soil and brown stone from Niyamgiri, processed with natural binders. The hill itself became pigment.
From this engagement emerged two key concepts in her work:
1. The Triangle Motif: Taken from Dongaria visual culture and the silhouette of the Niyamgiri hills, symbolising stability, sacred geography and divinity.
2. "Up and Down": Inspired by the daily journey of Dongria people climbing up and down the hills for water, market and rituals - a metaphor for human struggle, movement and resilience.
Two Core Concepts: Un-Urbanisation and Nature as Kin
Majhi's recent philosophy is built on two ideas.
Un-Urbanisation: She reverses urban development on canvas - bringing trees, animals, village life back into the concrete city, asking what the city has forgotten.
Dongria Lifestyle with Nature: She shows that for Dongaria, nature is not a resource to be used, but a family to belong to - god, home and identity at once.
From Cuttack Walls to the Parliament of India
Public art is central to her belief that art should meet people on the street.
Her large-scale murals and interventions are visible across Odisha, including Ring Road and Dagabara Sahi in Cuttack, and works created for the Men's FIH Hockey World Cup and Asian Athletics Championships in Bhubaneswar. Her community projects Pago_ and _Thought Loom transformed walls into dialogues.
In 2023, she served as Co-Sutradhar and creative contributor to People's Wall - Jan, Janani and Janmabhumi, a landmark participatory art project commissioned by Lalit Kala Akademi for the New Parliament House in New Delhi, bringing together women artists and artisans from across India.
The Educator: 15 Years with Children
For about 15 years, Majhi has worked with children, tribal residential schools and children with disabilities through initiatives like Kalpanadham and in collaboration with Gram Vikas and Tata Trusts.
Her pedagogy is simple: "Don't copy, remember." Children are encouraged to draw from their own memories - their house, tree, animal, festival, village journey.
Recognition and Ongoing Show
Majhi's works have been presented at Bharat Bhavan Bhopal, Nature Morte Gurgaon, Lalit Kala Akademi New Delhi, Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi, Bhubaneswar Art Trail, Gram Art Project and Vancouver Biennale-linked projects.
She is a recipient of the Odisha Lalit Kala Akademi State Award (2012) and the National Lalit Kala Akademi Scholarship (2009-2010).
Currently, her solo show 'Land as Memory, Matter as Landscape' at artCENTRIX Space Gallery brings together her journey - where soil is memory and landscape is story.
At its heart, Satyabhama Majhi's practice asks one vital question in an age of rapid change: How do we keep our places, and our memories of them, alive?
