Gandhi a figure of his time and ours: Curator of India Pavillion at Venice Biennale

India was returning to the Venice Biennale after eight years, and Roobina Karode had just four months to curate a show themed on Mahatma Gandhi.

What new could a Gandhi theme possibly offer, wondered sceptics, but the director and chief curator at Delhi's Kiran Nadar Museum of Art was firm in her belief that the Mahatma will never go out of fashion and set out to convince the naysayers.

"Gandhi is a figure of his own time and our times as well," Karode told PTI, positive that Gandhi will continue to resonate even 200 years after his time.

"He is somebody who is in public discourse very strongly because of his writings, his values, his complexity in thinking and, above all, he practised what he preached," she added.

For the India pavilion at the Biennale -- which began on May 11 and will continue till November 24 -- she did not want Gandhi to be present in the form we know. She did not want Bapu's spectacles, walking staff or 'charkha'.

Karode said she wanted the walls of the old Venetian building housing the pavilion to echo with the essence that is Gandhi, and this determined the choice of artists she decided to showcase.

The India Pavilion features 50 works by eight artists, including Nandalal Bose, M F Husain, Atul Dodiya, Shakuntala Kulkarni, Rumana Husain, Ashim Purkayastha, G R Iranna, and Jitish Kallat.

"I started thinking about Gandhi almost in a way that he is invisible, and yet so visible," she said.

Karode, who specialises in art history and has been involved with the teaching of Western and Indian Art History at various institutions, was interested in the different approaches to Gandhi and the different materialities in which the artists work.

"I didn't use any of the widely popular memorabilia of Gandhi, but I did use one symbol, a lesser know one -- the paduka in Iranna's work."