Divya Balivada at Bonhams: A Quiet That Sinks
A new painting by residency artist Divya Balivada has been selected for inclusion in It's Only Natural, a curated exhibition presented as part of Bonhams' Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art auction in London on 2 June 2026. The work, A Quiet That Sinks (2025), is an oil on canvas. Balivada is an alumna of the Colstoun Arts residency programme, and her selection for the sale was confirmed during her residency at Colstoun.
Jehangir Sabavala (1922-2011) The Break Through painted in 1966 is one of the highlight of the South Asian Sale. Image courtesy of Bonhams
The Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art department at Bonhams, led by Head of Department Priya Singh, has operated at the forefront of its field since the late 1990s, with industry recognised expertise in highlighting artists from across the region. The June auction brings together work by a number of the most established figures in twentieth-century South Asian art, including Maqbool Fida Husain, Jehangir Sabavala, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar, B. Prabha, and George Keyt. The inclusion of a newly selected work by a contemporary artist within a sale of this composition reflects the department's continuing engagement with current practice alongside the historically significant works.
The exhibition
It's Only Natural is curated by Vittoria Beltrame and presents work by Amrit Singh Sandhu, Divya Balivada, and Shumaiya Khan. The exhibition takes its conceptual starting point from Roland Barthes' Mythologies (1957) and its proposition that images are never as straightforward as they appear. Where myth, in Barthes' account, transforms history into something that seems natural, the works in the selection are positioned as resisting and reworking that process — unsettling inherited narratives and treating identity as something layered and in continual shift rather than fixed.
In Beltrame's curatorial text, Balivada's work is described as engaging with the internalised and culturally coded image of the self. The paintings are characterised as hovering between figuration and dissolution, presenting abstract bodies and gestural movement that resist legibility, and operating in a register of ambiguity in which perception is redefined and meaning altered. Beltrame situates this within Balivada's relationship to the natural environments that have shaped her practice, describing them as embedded in the work rather than serving as external inspiration — a reading that connects the formal qualities of the painting to her movement between Goa and London.
The work
A Quiet That Sinks is a modestly scaled painting; framed, it measures 50.2 by 40 centimetres. Its surface is densely worked, built from layered marks in a predominantly green palette that moves between sage and deeper forest tones, interrupted by passages of pale blue, white, and warmer notes of terracotta and apricot. The composition has no single focal point; the eye is held in motion across a field of gestures that fold into one another without resolving into a fixed image.
The paint is applied wet-on-wet, with colours drawn into one another while still live on the canvas, so that each mark retains the trace of those beneath it. At a distance the surface reads as suggestive of foliage or weather; viewed closely, it resolves into the physical record of paint moved by hand. The title points to a sense of descent and accumulation — a stillness arrived at through density rather than absence. The work is recognisably concerned with the properties of the medium itself: what oil paint can hold, and how a surface can be made to feel both immediate and sedimentary.
Divya Balivada (B.1992) A Quiet That Sinks, 2025. Image courtesy of Bonhams
Background
Balivada's route to painting was not direct. Trained as a dentist in Karnataka, she later turned to art and completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2025, where she was shortlisted for the inaugural Jaguar x RCA Prize. She received the Women's Achiever Art Award in Goa in 2024, and her solo exhibition In Between opened at the Royal Society of Arts in London earlier this year. Further presentations are scheduled in Goa and Tokyo.
Her method is distinctive. She often works on a self-built rotating loom that turns the painting surface continuously beneath her hand, allowing an unbroken sequence of mark-making and contributing to the sense of movement across the work. Her palette has frequently drawn on the intensity of colour associated with Indian visual life, and her practice has engaged with the art-historical tendency to treat the decorative as secondary. A Quiet That Sinks sits in a more tempered, earthbound register than much of her earlier work, indicating a practice still actively developing.
The Bonhams sale on 2 June will place A Quiet That Sinks before an international audience of collectors, curators, and institutions, within a context that situates the work among both Balivada's contemporaries and the established figures of South Asian modernism.
Divya Balivada is an alumna of the Colstoun Arts residency programme. 'It's Only Natural' is presented as part of Bonhams' Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art auction, London, 2 June 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Who is Divya Balivada? Divya Balivada (b. 1992) is an Indian artist based between Goa and London. Originally trained as a dentist in Karnataka, she later turned to painting and completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2025. Her work explores cyclicity, impermanence, and the relationship between identity and the natural environments that have shaped her.
What is A Quiet That Sinks?A Quiet That Sinks (2025) is an oil on canvas painting by Divya Balivada. Framed, it measures 50.2 by 40 centimetres. The work is densely layered and built using a wet-on-wet technique, in a predominantly green palette interrupted by passages of blue, white, terracotta, and apricot.
Where is Divya Balivada's work being exhibited in 2026?A Quiet That Sinks has been selected for It's Only Natural, a curated exhibition presented as part of Bonhams' Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art auction in London on 2 June 2026. Balivada also has forthcoming presentations in Goa and Tokyo, and her solo exhibition In Between was held at the Royal Society of Arts in London earlier in 2026.
What is the Bonhams Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art auction? It is a biannual London auction held by Bonhams, one of the world's principal auction houses. The department, led by Head of Department Priya Singh, has operated in this field since the late 1990s. The 2 June 2026 sale includes work by major twentieth-century South Asian artists such as Maqbool Fida Husain, Jehangir Sabavala, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar, B. Prabha, and George Keyt.
Who curated It's Only Natural? The exhibition is curated by Vittoria Beltrame and features work by Amrit Singh Sandhu, Divya Balivada, and Shumaiya Khan. Its conceptual framework draws on Roland Barthes' Mythologies (1957) and the idea that images, and the identities they depict, are constructed rather than fixed.
What is Divya Balivada's painting technique? Balivada works on a self-built rotating loom that turns the painting surface continuously beneath her hand, enabling an unbroken sequence of mark-making. She paints wet-on-wet, working colours into one another while the paint is still live on the canvas, which gives her surfaces their layered, sedimentary quality.
What is Divya Balivada's connection to Colstoun Arts? Divya Balivada is an alumna of the Colstoun Arts residency programme. Her selection for the Bonhams sale was confirmed during her residency at Colstoun.
What is the Colstoun Arts residency programme? Colstoun Arts is a contemporary art organisation based at Colstoun House in East Lothian, Scotland. Its residency programme hosts artists working across a range of media and supports the development of new work, with alumni going on to exhibit internationally.
