At The Edge Of Dissonance: The Rising Global Trajectory Of Mannat Gandotra

London-based artist Mannat Gandotra represents a compelling new voice in contemporary abstraction, balancing intellectual rigour with instinctive energy. An alumna of the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art, Gandotra has steadily built an international presence, exhibiting across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her growing visibility on the global stage reflects both institutional confidence in her practice and the resonance her work finds across diverse audiences.

Her recent solo exhibition Containers of Madness with Ota Fine Arts marked a significant milestone, positioning her within a respected international programme. This followed Outside the Possibility of Worldly (2025) at Half Gallery, alongside solo presentations in London and Italy and a duo exhibition in Singapore. In 2026, she further expands her engagement with the South Asian art landscape through her participation in India Art Fair, one of the region’s most influential platforms, underscoring her dialogue with audiences in India while maintaining her London base.

At the heart of Gandotra’s practice is a distinctive visual language built on dynamic compositional line structures. Her canvases pulse with tension, where colour and gesture behave less as decorative devices and more as living forces negotiating space. Influenced structurally by jazz improvisation and atonal music, her paintings resist easy harmony. Marks collide, disperse, and regroup, creating fields that feel both volatile and controlled. Rather than offering resolution, her works dwell in the productive space of dissonance, where instability becomes a site of vitality.

Equally significant is her engagement with the sensibility of Ragamala painting. While she does not replicate miniature traditions, she absorbs their emotional and musical frameworks, translating mood and temporality into abstraction. Architectural echoes, internal borders, and layered spatial tensions surface within her canvases, only to be destabilised. The result is work that feels expansive yet intimate, complex yet instinctive. Critics and viewers alike have responded to this refusal of hierarchy and her commitment to sustaining tension rather than smoothing it out.

Despite exhibiting across continents, Gandotra’s practice remains anchored in risk. A painting that resolves too quickly is often reworked; discomfort is deliberately introduced through unexpected colour pairings and disruptive forms. This insistence on vulnerability and experimentation has become a defining strength, distinguishing her within a generation of painters navigating the global contemporary circuit. Her participation at India Art Fair 2026 is not framed as a return, but as an ongoing conversation, allowing her work to exist within multiple geographies without being reduced to a singular identity.

About the Artist

London-based artist Mannat Gandotra is an alumna of the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art, and has exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her practice centres on dynamic compositional line structures shaped by her interest in jazz, atonal music, and the musical sensibilities of Ragamala painting, where colour, rhythm, and abstraction exist in expressive tension. She recently presented her solo exhibition Containers of Madness with Ota Fine Arts, further strengthening her growing global presence.