Image: ‘Cityscape 4’ (2025). Pen, Paper Collage and Acrylic on Paper, 26 x 11.5 in.
Deepshikha does not draw cities so much as accumulate them. Working in pen and ink, acrylic, collage and gold leaf, the Kolkata-based artist builds each composition through thousands of small, repeated marks using indenting, a method closer to sedimentation than illustration. The result is a body of work that trades the instant legibility of a skyline for something wild and arresting: architecture dissolving into foliage, roads thinning into pattern, dense canopies recurring at the edges of the frame. Nothing is stated outright. Everything is pressed in, the way a memory settles into worn stone rather than sitting on its surface.
We spoke with the artist about slow looking, guiding angels, and why reinvention keeps the work alive.
Image: (L) Detail from ‘Cityscape’ Diptych 18 × 9 in each. (R) Deepshikha in her studio.
The idea of “slow looking” is central to your practice. How did you arrive at this approach? Was there a particular moment or realization that made you commit to a visual language that resists immediate comprehension?
Slow looking is, perhaps, an interpretation the viewer arrives at. For me, it comes from years of practice — approaching each theme one stroke at a time, layering in a great many elements. That accumulation is likely what resists immediate comprehension.
Your work is said to explore how cities are experienced rather than documented. What would you hope a viewer, especially someone who has never been to Kolkata, takes away from that experience when they engage with your artworks?
My work is symbolic, inspired by the contemporary city life around me and its fast-paced nature, where disparate elements co-exist. It gestures toward a notion of the city, not any specific one. The compositions hide houses, doorways, windows, foliage, trees and flowers within them — the elements we miss in crowded, fast-paced city life. These hidden elements are a reminder of how the city accommodates mammoth growth while retaining its basic spirit, like trees that have stood for over a hundred years, largely unaffected by everything they’ve witnessed.
Image: ‘Angels in the City 3’’ (2025). Pen and Acrylic on Paper, 10.5 in diameter.
The ‘Angels in the City’ set introduces a new protagonist into the otherwise familiar cityscapes of your series. Who are these mythical bodies, and what is their role in this world you’ve built?
Angels are often described as supernatural beings who act as intermediaries between God and humans, guiding us along life’s difficult paths. We sometimes experience that guidance when we least expect it, especially in times of need. These mythical bodies represent the people who have touched my life in different ways — guiding me in the least expected forms, whether as parents, partner, friends, colleagues or associates met along the way. A friend once told me that people come into your life for a purpose, and when that purpose is fulfilled, they move on. This series is dedicated to all those people who have been my guiding angels — now and forever.
Image: ‘Cityscape 10 ’ (2025). Pen and Acrylic on Paper and Glass, 6 in diameter, 12 in height.
How would you render the relationship between the built environment and the natural world in your work?
There’s the stillness of the concrete all around, yet the lushness of the green expanse and the beauty of nature that accommodates us and gives us space to exist. We are a small part of a much larger scheme. I hope that carries into my art.
What artistic concerns steered you to explore new materials and formats for this series?
I have this innate desire to explore further, delve deeper and experiment toward new results. I always find it exciting. Even in life, one needs to keep reinventing oneself to enjoy it fully.
Image: Cityscape 3’’ (2025). Pen and Collage on Paper, 18 x 18.5 in.
The LMSA Take
What distinguishes Khaitan’s practice is her delicate treatment of density and detail. The labour of love behind her mixed-media series compels you to take your time and appreciate it. These works demand your full attention, an increasingly expensive commodity that makes them truly precious.
Cities often evoke sweeping views, skyscrapers, or latticed roads, and yet the Indented City seems to have been reclaimed by nature. The lithographic quality of the work operates as a psychological projection of Kolkata; the city becomes a state of mind, crowded with half-glimpsed courtyards and ancient trees that have outlived empires.
Khaitan’s mark-making is disciplined to the point of ritual, yet it never hardens into pattern for its own sake; gold leaf breaks in at moments that feel declarative, flagging what the eye would otherwise walk past. That specificity is what keeps Indented City from reading as generic urban nostalgia. It is a body of work about attention itself, and about what attention owes to the people and places that rarely ask for it.
Explore more works from the Indented City collection on LMSA.art