Sep 19 2026 to Sep 19 2026 10:30 a.m.

Where

Museum of Art & Photography (MAP)

Kasturba Road, Bengaluru 560001

Event Description

Comics are often categorized as entertainment for children or dismissed as popular culture. However, comic-making within the broader contemporary visual storytelling scene in India is a rich artistic practice,  part of a rapidly expanding creative economy and pedagogy, offering a viable career path.

Between The Panels, presented in conjunction with the exhibition A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling, is a daylong symposium that brings together artists, illustrators, students, scholars, fans, and industry leaders to explore comics through four core lenses: craft, research, pedagogy, and careers. Register here.

Key Note Address

10:30 am to 11:30 am 

With Viswajyoti Ghosh

What can comics hold? 

This keynote lecture invites you to consider comics as a way of looking at the world. Graphic novelist and illustrator Viswajyoti Ghosh will discuss the histories and influences that inform his practice, the relationship between image and text, and how comics serve as mediums that carry memory, observation and storytelling. Delving into their practice, the keynote session will also discuss what it means to be a comic artist and sustain a practice in comic-making in India today. 

Artist Talk: Vidyun Sabhaney

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm 

Join Vidyun Sabhaney, as she delves into her artistic practice. Vidyun will explore the many dimensions of creating a non-fiction comic - from witnessing and drawing to researching and fact-checking. During the session, she will reflect upon her own work as well as key influences from comics history. She will also discuss what it means to create non-fiction stories in today's media landscape, alongside important skills that every creator needs to render experience as sequential visual narrative. 

Teaching Comics: Craft, Practice and Pedagogy. 

With Amitabh Kumar, Lokesh Khodke and Shalini Srinivasan.

2:00 pm to 3:00 pm 

Where does comic-making sit within the fine arts and how should it be taught? This conversation will examine comics not just as an intersection of writing and illustration, but as a distinct artistic discipline with its own languages, methods and pedagogies. 

Focusing on art schools and institutions, the discussion will delve into the place of comic-making within art education, the challenges of building a sustainable art curriculum, and the role of institutions in nurturing artists and creating pathways into the field. 

Comics and Publication: From Making to Market. 

With Aditi Mali, Abhijit Kini, Anand Shenoy and Angshuman Chakraborty

3:30 pm to 4:30 pm 

You’ve finished working on your comic - congratulations! What’s next? Do you approach a publication house or do you self-publish? 

Bringing together artists, publishers and practitioners from the field, this session will explore the infrastructure of comic publishing today - how publishing agreements are negotiated, artist rights, revenue and remuneration, credit and creative control are addressed. It will also reflect on what it means to protect artist autonomy and voice while looking at different commercial considerations. 

From Panels to Pixels: Comics in Digital Worlds

5:00 pm to 6:30 pm 

With Deepti Megh and Arun Presanthen

The transition from pages of a comic book to the pixelated screens of early gaming consoles and television has captured the attention and interest of countless people. Providing creators with a reservoir of source material and narrative techniques, comics have given birth to countless ways of exploring animation, gaming and interactive media. 

This conversation brings together artists and practitioners working across the fields of animation, comic-making and game design to consider how the skills, aesthetics and methods of approaching comic books have translated into other digital forms of creation. 

Workshop - The Heroine’s Journey

With Samhita Arni. 

10:00 am to 1:00 pm. 

The Heroine’s Journey offers visual storytellers a different narrative language. Drawing on myth, film and contemporary storytelling, it explores transformation through relationship, interiority and connection — opening up different possibilities for how we imagine characters, conflict, power and change.

In this workshop, graphic novelist and author Samhita Arni explores the differences between the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journeys and how these structures can be translated into visual narratives. Through discussion and practical exercises, participants will experiment with ways of telling stories that move beyond the conventional heroic arc — and ask a larger question: can changing the stories we tell change how we see the world?

Comic Lab

With Ashwitha Jayakumar

11:00 am to 1:00 pm 

Are you working on a comic right now? Comic Lab allows you to bring your draft or work-in-progress and discuss it with established comic artists and editors. The session gives you the space to share your ideas, talk about your creative process and receive constructive and thoughtful feedback on your storytelling, visual language, pacing and narrative choices.

Comic Collector

10:30 am to 7:00 pm

The world of comics is vast! Even within independent, Indian comics, there are so many artists, so many writers, so many books and so many stories that you may feel a little overwhelmed on where to start. Don’t fret! For the Love of Comics is a special pop-up indie comics bookstore hosted by MAP and featuring a finely curated selection of comics.

From across a wide spectrum of styles, genres, obsessions and audience age groups, this is your chance to find your next (or first) great comics read!

Put together by Indian Summer Press, Studio Niyet, and Smit's Bookery.