5 South Asian artists you don't know, but should

There were blockbuster art shows this year; Nilima Sheikh's tour de force at Chemould Prescott Road followed by Nalini Malani’s two-gallery show and finally Anish Kapoor's first ever showing in India.

But it's a set of young artists from India and Pakistan who closed out the first decade of the new millennium with their fresh approach to art.

These are five riveting works in different media, at five local galleries which grabbed my heart this year.

They showed that Mumbai has a growing contemporary art scene and galleries with vision to support those dreams.

Bani Abidi at Project 88

Bani Abidi returned to Pakistan from her studies in the United States in 2004 and found what had changed in her country was that Islam "had happened."

In her September show 'Section Yellow' at Project 88 her sense of humor about this observation is intact and gets reinforced through her art which addresses the absurdities of the changed state.

The video work "The Distance From Here" poignantly shows people queueing up and waiting with visa applications in an office waiting room. In the quest for emigration they are conditioned by the system to wait interminably and accept these hierarchies and subtle power games between cultures without questioning.

Yet there is nothing absurd about the photographs. Abidi has wonderfully plucked the beauty from the midst of the absurd, something we all do subconsciously, living within the chaos of any South Asian city.

A stunning set of photographs show opalescent folders floating mid space in the frame. Hung as they are, frame touching frame, collectively they form a gapped line, the varying thickness of the folders imparting a gentle undulation.

Stanley Kubrick would have loved these, abstracted plucked 'absurdities' floating in infinity. A line that could go on forever like the endless queue of people waiting to emigrate. The superb mid-suspension of the pastel hued file folders makes one think of levity in a zero gravity space when what they contain (people's documents for a new life) is anything but light.

BMP Building, Ground floor, N.A. Sawant Marg, near Colaba Fire Station; +91 (0) 22 2281 0066; Monday 2-7 p.m.; Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; www.project88.in

Prashant Pandey at Gallery Maskara

Recently graduated from MSU Baroda, Prashant Pandey's work at the final year's student show won him a residency at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

In "Shelf Life," displayed at Gallery Maskara in September, what was striking was the consistency of the artist's mind over materiality, even though every end result may not have been a successful artwork.

No conventional garbage bags and recycled trash in an obvious way, but blood, urine, sweat, tears, cobwebs and old banknotes went through a process of reinvention and in that process and were tweaked, shredded, packaged and woven into a new life.

I walked passed "Universe" and in my mind registered "pretty."

Something about the shadow it cast on the wall made me walk back and examine it closely. It takes moments longer to realize how discarded cigarette butts have been painstakingly torn open to form individual units, then together, amalgamated into a circular field of flowers. The cigarettes were discarded at various stages of their being smoked so there’s a beautiful gradation of tone achieved in clever placement.

Suspended between two glass panels it gently quivers resurrected with new energy even as it casts a magical shadow on the wall.

3rd Pasta Lane, Colaba; +91 (0) 22 2202 3056; Tuesday-Sunday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; www.gallerymaskara.com

Waqas Khan at Lakeeren

It seems ironic that another Pakistani artist showed simultaneously with Bani Abidi on at Project 88 (as did a third, Shezad Dawood at Chemould Prescott Road) during October, the week the nation held its breath for the verdict on the Babri Masjid demolition.

In fact, it was a treat as each displayed different practices within Pakistani contemporary art.

Waqas Khan trained in the Miniature style at the Lahore Art School. He uses the technique of miniature painting in his work that is far removed from the traditional style.

Using pointillism, he starts with a dot and builds on it in slow contemplation which he said is almost like meditation, into works that are "sacred geometry," a seeming fabric of dots and tiny circles forming larger forms or forms within forms, finite into infinity.

The smallest works in the show were jewels to hold in one's hand. Thoughtfully mounted at architect Bijoy Jain's suggestions with benches in front of the works, where one could sit and contemplate these works as they are meant to be viewed; in solitude.

The most arresting one among several that vied for attention was the first I encountered on entering the gallery. "Lines of Force" is a series of layered dotted lines with a schism in the center. Is it a gentle prying open of a block? A slow tear of fabric? A page being torn?

Whatever it is, its poetic rendition makes it monumental despite its small size.

6/18 Grant's Building, Second Floor, opposite Basilico, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba; +91 (0) 22 6522 4179. 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; www.lakeerengallery.com

Ritesh Meshram at Chemould Prescott Road

In the dozen or so assembles Ritesh Meshram exhibited at Chemould Prescott Road in June, these small displays were the most thought provoking and satirical.

Using found objects and the titles of books he bought second hand, the artist weaves not a narrative but a tiny thought that the viewer can but need not connect with. The artworks are arresting by themselves and should start a conversation regardless.

In "The Complete Guide to Home Maintenance," the book itself is absent, the box sleeve embossed with the title is the start or base of the work. On it rests a rack of brass plates, one with strange rows of symbols others with little threads tied through pierced holes and so on. Each plate seems like some ancient code yet to be deciphered, yet hinted at the absent book that would codify these instructions.

The inscribed gibberish seems to suggest there are no instructions and that in reality, a homemaker is a maker of her own rules. Just as Meshram has made up his in these whimsical little table top wonders.

Queen's Mansion, 3rd Floor, Ghanshayan Talwatkar Marg, +91 (0) 22 2200 0211, Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; www.gallerychemould.com

C K Rajan at Gallerie Mirchandani + Steinrucke

One of the shows I enjoyed the most this year was C K Rajan's "Mad Furnitures and Psychic Objects."

I walked in to Gallerie Mirchandani + Steinrucke sometime in October and was confronted by colorful objects that were familiar everyday-use implements. Then again they weren't.

That's when the psychic part kicked in, the realization that the artist was not just teasing us with fun colors and twisted objects rendered unusable, but in doing so had cloaked them in personalities of their own. The objects suddenly sprung out as people I could engage with, and chuckle at the subtle jibes they took at the viewer.

If there was one artwork that would stay with me from the year it would be the "Psychopathic Killer Fan."

Its size is meant to make you smile as you enter the large room that it fills almost entirely. You walk forward grinning, taking in the cheerful red blades and suddenly you realize the fan moves. And, that suspended at neck level, your head is about to be guillotined.

Of course, you step back and soon realise its slow turn is mocking you again. It's threatening you, but not really, yet the threat hangs in its non execution and is repeated with each rotation.

As a kinetic sculpture it is successful in its simplicity of form and interplay with the viewer and a concept superbly conceived and conveyed. This is one psychopath I could have hung around with for longer.

2 Sunny House, 16/18 Mereweather Road, behind Taj Mahal Hotel, Colaba; +91 (0) 22 2202 3030; Monday - Friday 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m.; Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; www.galeriems.com