The Open Studio / Mayank Athwal
Mayank Athwal
Two Sides of a Coin
Seven weeks separate a divided Punjab from a free India
Old newsprint, yellow as a dry field, fills the sky.
On one side, men in khaki and white carry what they can lift.
A sack bends a back. A stick tests the road.
On the other side, white caps tilt up toward saffron and green.
The wooden pole stands between them like a border.
The same black ink runs under both.
The work
In Two Sides of a Coin, Mayank Athwal sets two front pages of The Tribune side by side. One, from Lahore on 24 June 1947, reads "Punjab to be Partitioned". The other, from 15 August 1947, reads "India Wakes to Life & Freedom". Athwal draws over them in Adobe Photoshop. On the left, Sikh men walk with sacks and sticks. On the right, men in white caps look up at the flag. Athwal is from the Government College of Art in Chandigarh.
In the artist’s words
“This work is part of my continuing interest in history, Punjab and Sikh visual culture. It reflects my attempt to study the past, take inspiration from historical artistic traditions and transform those influences into my own digital illustrations.”
- Theme
- Partition and Independence
- Material
- Digital illustration in Adobe Photoshop over digital copies of two pages of The Tribune
- Size
- 76.2 × 88.9 cm
- Year
- 2026
- Edition
- It's a print of my this Digital illustration which will be exhibited for sale
- Framed
- No
- About the artist
- Government College of Art, Chandigarh
- From
- Chandigarh
- Code
- RC-659
