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A row of small framed photographs standing along a low white ledge, a large dim projection of a seated figure filling the wall above them.This photograph on its own page

Through their eyes

From Shimla—once the summer capital of British India—Vikas Kumar examines how being watched shapes who we are, and what it means to return the gaze.

Published 30 December 2025

This has finished

On view
12 December 2025 – 31 March 2026
Times
10AM to 6PM (Mon to Sunday) Till March 31st, 2026
Performer
Vikas Kumar
Part of
Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26

Where

Vallabhdas Kanji Limited (VKL Warehouse)

Event venue · no 6/951, Bazaar Road, Mattancherry

You’ve just missed it — take it home anyway

The 2025–26 Biennale ended on 31 March 2026. The next is expected around December 2027. We made a book of all 72 exhibits, venue by venue, with the photographs — 76 pages, 9 MB.

We email you the book. Nothing else.

Being watched creates a continuous negotiation between what we are, who we want to be, and how we are seen. Vikas Kumar invites us to cultivate an active gaze of our own.

Artist

Vikas Kumar (JLN Govt. College of Art, Shimla)

Medium

Performance Prints and Video

A large projection on a wall shows a person sitting cross-legged, holding a circular object up to their face, with numerous small white spheres scattered across the surface in front of them. Along a shelf below the projection, a row of framed photographs is displayed, each containing a black-and-white image of figures and objects.

About

Through their eyes is a performance presented through video, accordion book, and graphic prints. Through imagery and performative gestures, Vikas examines how the gaze influences behaviour and self-perception.

The action of embodying the eye to return the gaze becomes a recurring motif. It confronts viewers while revealing the artist’s own vulnerabilities—exposing patterns of observation, judgement, and self-perception.

Living in Shimla, the former summer capital of British India, has made Vikas critical of the colonial gaze and its residues on local people and landscape. This work asks: what happens when we look back?