India, Jan. 11 -- Vivid splashes of crimson and deep indigo greet every visitor the second they walk through the door, making it clear that Meena Sansanwal has bypassed the traditional path of safe, easy art. In her new show 'Divine Manifestation' at Sanya Malik's Black Cube Gallery, the canvases seem to possess a life of their own, as if the images are physically exhaling into the space.

You can feel a real, heavy sort of pressure in the room-the kind of grit that only builds up when an artist spends a decade wrestling with her own head just to get something honest onto the canvas. At the center of it all is the female form, but these are a far cry from those stiff, typical portraits.

In Sansanwal's standout piece 'Human Flower', limbs...