Kaavad Katha: Doors of Maya is a performative storytelling experience inspired by the Kaavad tradition of Rajasthan, where a portable wooden shrine unfolds through multiple painted doors, each revealing a story, a genealogy, or a sacred narrative. The Kaavad functions simultaneously as an object, archive, and theatre.

For its presentation in dialogue with Gulammohammed Sheikh’s retrospective at Durbar Hall, the performance expands the Kaavad beyond its physical form. Sheikh’s practice has long engaged with layered storytelling, miniature painting traditions, Bhakti and Sufi poetry, and the coexistence of multiple histories within a single pictorial space. In this context, the exhibition itself becomes a series of unfolding narratives where each artwork opens another door into interconnected worlds.

The performance begins within the exhibition galleries. A Kaavadiya storyteller encounters a Kabir singer, initiating a dialogue between oral tradition and devotional poetry. As the audience moves through the gallery spaces, fragments of Kabir’s songs and Kaavad stories resonate alongside the exhibited artworks, gradually transforming the gallery into a living storytelling shrine.

The journey culminates in a collective performance where the Kaavad storytelling tradition unfolds through narration, painted imagery, and live folk music. In this final moment, the Kaavad becomes a shared space of reflection, inviting audiences to re-enter the world carrying new symbols, questions, and ways of seeing.

This performance draws upon the philosophical idea of Maya, the shifting and layered nature of reality, to reimagine the Kaavad as a contemporary storytelling device. As each door opens, worlds overlap myth and memory, history and imagination, the sacred and the everyday. The audience is invited to move through these thresholds, encountering stories that reveal how narratives travel across time and space.

While you’re here, explore KNMA’s ongoing exhibition

Of Worlds Within Worlds: Gulammohammed Sheikh