New Delhi, Feb. 1 -- Just as the Bengal Biennale was wrapping up this January, I went to see the art installation at the Alipore Jail museum, the famous red-brick Kolkata jail now turned into a museum.

There was a room filled with the many forms of Kali curated by Gayatri Sinha, from Chhinnamasta holding her own decapitated head to an ivory-skinned bare-breasted Kali who seemed to have emerged from European classical art. In another room, Arpan Mukherjee used the fragile archaic medium of ambrotype to explore the changing landscape along the road from his village to the nearest town, tracing both the vanished guava trees and ponds and his own departure from the village. Bappaditya Biswas used the prisoners weaving room to tell the story ...