Practice rooted in place.
Satyabhama Majhi is a contemporary Indian artist, social activist and curator whose work spans painting, sculpture, installation art and photography.
Art as observation, relationship and social memory.
Majhi is widely recognised for a versatile art practice that explores the impacts of growing urbanisation, regional aesthetics and community connection.
Across her paintings, public projects and research, the landscape is rarely empty. Hills and forests are populated by subtle human activity; maps become stages for labour, movement and urban life; parks and public spaces expand into social theatres of gathering, exchange and everyday ritual.
Her engagement with Odisha’s indigenous communities, including the Dongaria Kondh, extends beyond representation into material and cultural research. The use of locally gathered pigments, attention to wall-painting traditions and study of symbolic forms all become ways of connecting artistic process with ecological and cultural context.
Community practice is equally central. Through initiatives such as Kalpanadham and collaborations involving organisations including Gram Vikas and Tata Trust, she has supported creative learning with tribal children, encouraging lived routines and personal observations to become visual narratives.
Curatorial & public engagement
Majhi served as a core ideator and curator for the “People’s Wall - Jan, Janani and Janmabhumi” project inside India’s New Parliament House, curated alongside the Lalit Kala Akademi. The project brought together regional aesthetics, tribal art and the perspectives of female artisans from across the country.
She has also curated and created public wall murals across Odisha, including major urban beautification work in Cuttack.
Between ecology and the everyday.
From rural hills to dense city maps, the work repeatedly asks how people inhabit, shape and remember the spaces around them.