Finding home in India

For Julia Usmanova, home was never just a birthplace, but a feeling reflected through her artworks inspired by India

Belonging is rarely about where a person is born. For Russian artist Julia Usmanova, it is a landscape discovered entirely through the senses. Curated by Neena Gulati, When India Became Home lays this entire transition bare. The exhibition, running at New Delhi’s Bikaner House until 23 June 2026, anchors itself on Usmanova’s specific series, Bilateral Layerings. To tie her cold Russian upbringing to the years she spent absorbing the streets of Kolkata and Delhi, she leans entirely on the Indian female form. Talking to the artist strips away the standard gallery speak. Usmanova is quick to point out that the women she paints are never just passive subjects. They are looking right back at you, acting as the quiet observer and the focal point all at once.

The emotional anchor of the collection rests within a single moment of clarity. Usmanova recalled sitting in her Russian studio after a trip, suddenly realising she felt deeply homesick for India. That exact flash of longing birthed Tiger, a dreamlike piece where a great striped beast softly cradles a sleeping woman. The animal merges Siberian and Royal Bengal heritages, acting as a clear emblem of her dual cultural existence.

Her memories of West Bengal breathe heavily through Jasmine. Inspired by late-night walks through rainy Kolkata streets, Usmanova explained that the painting captures a half-asleep woman enveloped by white blossoms, catching the intense, fleeting gaze of a stranger met just once. This quietude carries over into Drying clothes, which captures the blissful, silent hour after lunch when the world rests. In Solitude, she builds a beautiful tension between the stable profile of a woman and a dissolving background of paint drips, while Midday and Midnight and Fog explore deeper psychological realities and the quiet spaces of the subconscious.

Usmanova handles her brush with an affectionate grace, proving that human connection easily bypasses national borders to offer a shared language of love.

I suddenly realised that I feel homesick for India; it became my second home.

-Julia Usmanova