This exhibit looked at the culture around puppets not as an artistic object, but as an overall cultural manifestation of a people’s oral and intangible heritage. Several puppet manifestations are actually protected by UNESCO.

‘Akhyan’ means narration. The exhibition thus explores and celebrates the Indian narrative traditions that tell a story through the employment of objects that speak, such as masks, puppets or scrolls (blind romances or illustrated tales). These three forms feature a very specific relationship between the narrator and the talking object. Here, hiding and revealing go hand in hand, as they create a world of meanings and interactions with their own body of logic and patterns.