We were pleased to present The Wry Eye, a display showcasing an archive of cartoons by Inder Bhan Madan which opened at Project_Space at the FICA Reading Room from 20 April to 20 June 2022.

An engineer by profession, who worked for the Post and Telegraph Department, Inder Bhan Madan dedicated himself to a single hobby with great solemnity. Every day for more than fifty years (1950s to early 2000s), he drew cartoons that acted as a personal, diaristic lens into the world around him. This collection of cartoons—preserved by his late wife Kamala Madan, and now by their daughter Shobha Madan—encapsulates a very exciting perspective into the mid-20th century world, seen through the eyes of an invested and often skeptically humorous commentator. Numbering over 17000, the cartoons are a record of his observations from different time periods in his life. They convey complexity and nuance, and are richly diverse in format, size and medium, representing his experiments with material as well as his keen eye for detail and his tenacious ear for the absurdly comic. 

Our process of working with the archive has evolved since our earliest association with the collection in 2017, when we first showcased a fragment of the cartoons as part of FICA’s C 13 display. In this curatorial experiment of inhabiting a soon-to-be-demolished house, a small selection of Madan’s cartoons were reproduced and pinned on a sunboard. They carried a particular resonance in the manner in which they spoke to the world outside, encapsulating the daily act of witnessing a nation in the making. We were also pleased to be working with BlueJackal as part of this process, and together we were able to imagine other possibilities for this material.

The Wry Eye curated a more exhaustive exploration of the archive in its current form and brought together a section that has been digitized and inventoried into phases. With this display, we charted a course through the life of Inder Bhan Madan, documented by his cartoons that spotlight his encounters with the everyday and the eccentric through delightful first-hand commentary on society, politics, war, corruption, institutions, landscapes and relationships—all strikingly relevant to our contemporary moment. 

Through this exhibition, we delved deeper into this archive which was in the process of being read alongside the thematic clusters and inclinations that emerge and develop across the vast collection. We look forward to imagining and inviting future tangents, novel engagements and exponentially exciting readings of the cartoons and their expanse. An invitation to look closer at the extraordinary pauses that programme and punctuate our strange, worldly interactions, The Wry Eye assimilated the outline of a life well-lived, drawing on the timeless hilarity of Inder Bhan Madan’s astute reflections on the possibilities of the mundane. 

Acknowledgements: 

The Wry Eye was organised in collaboration with Chandra and Shobha Madan. We are very grateful to them for all the conversations, anecdotes and expert insights into the life and times of their father, Inder Bhan Madan. 

This exhibition was curated and designed by Shambhavi Gairola, with additional curatorial support from Annalisa Mansukhani. 

FICA has hosted the original cartoons on our premises since 2018-19. The process of digitizing the cartoons was begun in 2011 by Shobha Madan, and reached its final phase of compilation in 2021 with the assistance of Shambhavi Gairola.

While the display has now come to an end at Project_Space, we are thrilled to now be launching inderbhanmadanarchive.org—a website designed to assimilate the afterlife of The Wry Eye, while also revisiting some of the key elements that were part of the display. The website brings back the illustrated timeline of his life and work, a virtual glimpse into our themed booklets, and images from the exhibition with a particular focus on the various phases that the collection encompasses. During its almost three month-long display at Project_Space, the archive played host to some wonderfully enriching conversations and segues—something we hope to be able to extend through this website, with different routes of access to allow for more tangents to form, and for more engaged readings to stack our shelves with.

A growing repository for the archive, its cartoons and their possibilities, inderbhanmadanarchive.org is now open to all. It is best viewed on a desktop.