The Boy

Madhvi Parekh’s art is unique in many ways, one of which is how it has rendered art historians clueless about how to pigeon-hole her in a particular category. An urban artist whose work is a generous ode to the folk traditions of India in a language that is part borrowed from folk culture and partly imagined, Parekh has come to be likened to Jamini Roy, who began folk modernism at the start of the twentieth century. In this work, she creates a portrait of a boy in his local environment—in the background is his habitat with grassland, trees, animals, people working in a field, a graveyard, all rendered in a flattened perspective. The boy poses for the artist with a shy, endearing smile.