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'Dream Girl', the debut solo exhibition by Mumbai-based artist Maithili Chaturvedi, revisits some of Bollywood's most iconic actresses through a series of evocative oil paintings on velvet. Featuring figures such as Hema Malini and Parveen Babi, the exhibition examines the intersection of celebrity, femininity and desire. Rather than offering nostalgic tributes, Chaturvedi explores how these women became enduring cultural symbols shaped by cinema and public imagination. Presented as the inaugural exhibition at Gallery Maxima in Mumbai's Fort district, Dream Girl invites viewers to reflect on the enduring power of images
For generations of Indians, the faces of actresses like Hema Malini, Rekha, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Helen, and Parveen Babi have existed in our memories. Their images have travelled far beyond the films that first made them famous, becoming cultural symbols that continue to shape ideas of beauty and femininity.
In 'Dream Girl;, her debut solo exhibition, Mumbai-based artist Maithili Chaturvedi returns to these familiar figures to investigate the complex relationship between image and performance. On view from 27 June to 1 August 2026, the exhibition presents a series of oil paintings on velvet that revisit some of Hindi cinema's most recognisable women through a contemporary lens, seeing through the nostalgia.
The exhibition also marks the opening of Gallery Maxima, a new contemporary art space founded by curator and arts professional Sunaina Rajan. Located within Mumbai's historic Kitab Mahal building in Fort, the gallery aims to create a platform for contemporary artistic practices emerging from South Asia and its diaspora.
Chaturvedi's choice of velvet as a surface is particularly significant. Long associated with luxury and theatricality, the material echoes the visual language of classic Bollywood while simultaneously softening and complicating the images it carries. The paintings possess a cinematic quality, drawing viewers into worlds that feel innately intimate.
Rather than offering straightforward portraits of film stars, Chaturvedi explores the personas that surrounded them. Her works examine how these women were transformed into icons through cinema and public imagination. She asks viewers to consider the distance between the individual and the image, between the woman and the role she was expected to embody.
The exhibition unfolds as a meditation on femininity and visibility. The actresses depicted in Dream Girl were often cast as objects of admiration, and fantasy, yet they also occupied a unique position within Indian popular culture as figures onto whom audiences projected their desires, anxieties, and dreams. Chaturvedi's paintings engage with these layered histories, revealing the tensions between agency and performance.
By revisiting these cinematic legends, Chaturvedi she invites audiences to reflect on how cultural icons are created and remembered. The women depicted in Dream Girl cease to exist merely as actresses but as carefully constructed images shaped by media. By returning to them decades later, Chaturvedi asks what remains when the performance ends and the mythology takes over.
'Dream Girl' is on view from 27 June to 1 August, 2026. Follow Maithili Chaturvedi on Instagram here.
