Hyderabad's latest cultural offering is positioning heritage not as a relic of the past but as a living, evolving language of form, memory and craft. Living Temples II, a month-long exhibition organised by EkChitra, opens a wide lens on India's artistic traditions by placing painting, architectural drawing and textile recreation in a single curatorial frame. The show arrives at a moment when public interest in heritage is increasingly shaped by questions of preservation, interpretation and access, and it responds with an exhibition that is as much about cultural continuity as it is about visual splendour.
Heritage In Motion
At the centre of the exhibition is a 32-foot scroll by artist K.G. Nagendra Babu, a work that uses scale to create immersion and narrative momentum. Long-form scroll painting has deep roots in South Asian visual culture, where the format historically served as both an artistic device and a storytelling instrument. In a contemporary exhibition setting, that tradition acquires fresh relevance: the viewer does not simply glance at an image but moves through it, reading art as sequence, rhythm and accumulated detail. The scale of the work also signals ambition. It suggests that heritage can be experienced not only through isolated masterpieces but through expansive visual journeys that connect iconography, architecture and lived memory.
The exhibition's architectural illustrations of Hampi extend that idea into the built environment. Hampi, with its monumental ruins and layered historical associations, remains one of India's most resonant heritage landscapes. By translating its structures into illustration, the exhibition invites viewers to consider architecture as both documentation and interpretation. Such works do more than reproduce stone forms; they restore attention to proportion, line, and spatial imagination. In a city like Hyderabad, itself shaped by centuries of architectural synthesis, the inclusion of Hampi creates a dialogue between different heritage geographies and underscores the continuing relevance of India's temple and courtly traditions in contemporary visual culture.
Textiles As Cultural Memory
One of the most distinctive elements of Living Temples II is the recreation of saris associated with M.S. Subbulakshmi, the legendary Carnatic vocalist whose public image became inseparable from elegance, discipline and cultural authority. Textiles in this context are not ornamental extras. They function as historical evidence, aesthetic markers and carriers of identity. By reconstructing these saris, the exhibition draws attention to the material culture surrounding performance and public memory, showing how clothing can become part of a larger national iconography.
This approach is especially significant because it broadens the definition of heritage beyond monuments and paintings. It places costume, craftsmanship and personal style within the same cultural conversation as temple architecture and narrative art. That is an important curatorial move in an era when heritage institutions are increasingly expected to engage audiences across disciplines. Rather than treating art forms as separate silos, the exhibition suggests that India's cultural inheritance is most fully understood when its visual, architectural and textile traditions are read together.
The month-long format also matters. A longer exhibition run allows for more than ceremonial viewing; it creates the possibility of repeat visits, discussion and educational engagement. In practical terms, that can help shift heritage exhibitions away from one-time spectacle and toward sustained public encounter. For a city with a strong appetite for cultural programming, the show offers a model of how traditional themes can be presented with contemporary curatorial clarity.
Curating Living Heritage
Living Temples II reflects a broader trend in Indian cultural presentation: the move from passive display to interpretive storytelling. By combining a monumental scroll, architectural renderings and textile recreation, EkChitra is not merely exhibiting objects. It is constructing an argument about how heritage survives—through adaptation, re-reading and the continued labour of artists and curators. The exhibition's title itself is telling. Temples are often imagined as fixed, sacred structures, but the word "living" reframes them as active cultural forms that continue to inspire new work.
That framing has wider significance for India's cultural sector. As audiences become more diverse and digitally informed, exhibitions must do more than preserve; they must contextualise. Living Temples II appears designed to do exactly that, using familiar heritage references to open up fresh ways of seeing. In doing so, it reinforces a crucial idea: India's artistic past is not preserved only in museums or ruins, but in the ongoing act of making, remaking and remembering.