Launched in 2014, PhotoSparks is a weekly feature from YourStory, with photographs that celebrate the spirit of creativity and innovation. In the earlier 1,020 posts, we featured an art festival, cartoon gallery. world music festival, telecom expo, millets fair, climate change expo, wildlife conference, startup festival, Diwali rangoli, and jazz festival.

The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) is featuring two outstanding exhibitions: Grip, Hold, Pin, and A Moving Line. Both will run until November this year (see our earlier photo essays from this popular Bengaluru cultural hub here).

Curated by Aayati Sengupta, the first exhibition includes historical objects as well as contemporary photography that explore Indian wrestling as a living cultural tradition. “Long before cameras documented wrestlers inside the akhara, artists were already recording the rituals, discipline and symbolism that surrounded wrestling,” Sengupta tells YourStory.

For example, early Ragamala paintings and textile labels showed how wrestling was not just a show of force but an expression of community, identity and labour. The exhibition highlights the social, cultural and artistic worlds that have shaped wrestling.

Aspects such as discipline and vulnerability are showcased through the lenses of Jyoti Bhatt, Raghu Rai, TS Satyan, Indrajit Khambe, and Prarthna Singh. Contemporary practitioners and some of the recent political controversies are also featured.

“For me, wrestling has never been just about competition. It is a way of life shaped by discipline, community and generations of shared tradition,” Khambe explains.

The physicality of the sport becomes a form of expression through which values such as courage, endurance and respect are communicated.

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