Barbican, London
Covering a time of national crisis, this impeccably structured show reveals artists chronicling destruction, joy and hope for what their country might become

There are some bruising paintings in The Imaginary Institution of India. Rameshwar Broota’s Reconstruction (1977) throbs with bureaucratic horror. Hunched in chairs at the bottom of a vast streaked canvas sit rows of compliant apelike figures – most faceless – with numbers on their chests. Above their heads dangle coloured loops of electric wire. It’s not clear what is happening – or what is about to – but it’s nothing good. The ape-people sit patiently.

Against a night-black sky the tangled, lacerated corpse of activist playwright Safdar Hashmi sprawls from the crook of a tree. His skin waxy and agitated with pink abrasions, his mouth still agape, his eyes hidden by an abstract red slash of paint. Painted by MF Husain in 1989, the year the 34-year-old was murdered during a street theatre performance with his company Janam, it is a painting of undiluted horror.