Pushpa Kumari (b. 1969), trained from childhood by her grandmother Mahasundari Devi, is among the most inventive of contemporary Mithila painters. Keeping the dense line and motif of the tradition, she turns it on new subjects — gender, social injustice, female infanticide, the environment — making Madhubani a language of comment as well as devotion.
Her work has shown at the Asia Pacific Triennial and galleries across the world, proof that Mithila painting is a living, questioning art and not a museum piece.