Rebels, masters and mavericks: What’s hot at India Art Fair 2025

Art Heritage has, among others, Haren Das’s woodcuts connected paper, and Photoink is showing photographs of Vivan Sundaram alongside his gramps Umrao Singh Sher-Gil.

At the Dhoomimal Gallery is simply a Raja Ravi Varma representation alongside canvases of different renowned modernists, but besides their smaller works connected paper. “We recognize that respective of the bigger works person a higher price-point and the smaller works are besides meant for younger collectors, a mode for them to get works of renowned masters,” said Uday Jain, manager of Dhoomimal Gallery.

Stop astatine Crayon Art for 11th period chromatic sculptures and works of Thomas and William Daniell showing India of the precocious 1700s, from Jama Masjid to Taj Mahal.

Exhibition by assorted artists astatine India Art Fair, Okhla NSIC ground. Express photograph by Abhinav Saha

Threading stories

The fair’s committedness to textile arts reveals the medium’s evolving relation successful modern expression. Known for her allegorical narratives, Rekha Rodwittiya brings unneurotic respective of her recurring motifs and engagements successful 2 hand-embroidered works designed by her and created by Milaaya Art, titled “Home is Wherever You Are,” astatine Sakshi Gallery.

Grosvenor Gallery has a rag doll by Nek Chand, and Chatterjee and Lal person Moumita Das’s cotton-dyed and yarn partition works. At Gallery Espace, Manish Gera Baswani has works successful delicate Chikankari, Manish Pushkale’s works astatine Akar Prakar get the painted patterns from Kantha embroidery, and Gurjeet Singh transforms discarded textiles into multi-layered faces astatine Chemould CoLab.

Artists from Bangladesh, showing astatine Britto Arts Trust, are besides agreed by their usage of textile panels to sermon varied concerns, and successful an outdoor installation––The Whisperers––French creator Deborah Fischer has worked with charpai weaver Dinesh Solanki to weave her photographs of decaying walls crossed Jodhpur into a partition mat.

Showing with the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Sriparna Dutta has virtually woven stories to stock the problems of marginalised women she works with successful a colony adjacent Santiniketan.

Exhibition by assorted artists astatine India Art Fair, Okhla NSIC ground, successful New Delhi connected Thursday, February 06, 2025. Express photograph by Abhinav Saha

Village voices

From Warli to Gond, Chikankari to Madhubani, indigenous creation forms person adjacent prominence, challenging the accepted hierarchy of good arts. If the Gondwana Art Project has Gond artists coating much modern patterns, Delhi Crafts Council has hand-painted works successful earthy dyes by Silpinwita Das. At Pichwai Tradition and Beyond, curator-entrepreneur Pooja Singhal has reinterpreted Pichvai creation with much modern palettes and nuanced compositions.

Gallery Ragini is showcasing P Swamy sculptures successful wood, Rian and Najish Khan partition tapestries, Dhavat Singh miniatures and KM Singh’s Pichvais, among others. “The just gives adjacent level to accepted arts, which is important to bring them the designation they deserve,” said Nidhi Jain, manager of Gallery Ragini.

Exhibition by assorted artists astatine India Art Fair, Okhla NSIC ground, successful New Delhi connected Thursday, February 06, 2025. Express photograph by Abhinav Saha

Loud whispers

Social commentary emerges arsenic a almighty taxable passim the fair. Art mirrors nine and its pressing issues. While each artwork tells a story, others marque much nonstop governmental and socio-economic references. Through his installation made of discarded metallic tube –– Dar-Badar 2.0 –– Mohd Intiyaz talks astir inequitable h2o distribution.

With “My Village is Going Abandon,” Umesh S embodies the gradual erosion of cultivation heritage. Yogesh Barve has LED tickers suspended from the extortion to item substance from Dalit writings that impulse adjacent opportunities. His references see writings of societal reformers BR Ambedkar, Jyotirao Phule and Periyar.

At her solo booth with Gallery Threshold, Anindita Bhattacharya’s layered works see the 24 x 8 feet And Still, the Paperboy Brings More that refers to the level program of the Babri Masjid, quality articles published successful aboriginal 2024, and words successful Urdu from the Preamble.

Exhibition by assorted artists astatine India Art Fair, Okhla NSIC ground, successful New Delhi connected Thursday, February 06, 2025. Express photograph by Abhinav Saha

Global players, section game

The planetary heavyweights haven’t missed the party, with renowned galleries similar Lisson, David Zwirner, and Galleria Continua bringing works by planetary artists. Chinese dissident creator Ai Weiwei returns with a overmuch smaller Neolithic Vase Merged with Toy Bricks astatine Lisson Gallery. The assemblage is besides showing Japanese-American Kelly Akash’s hand-blown solid sculptures, and British Indian-origin creator Anish Kapoor’s 2012 “Random Triangle Mirror” successful stainless alloy and lacquer.

David Zwirner booth is showcasing caller works by Pakistani-American sculptor Huma Bhabha and Columbian creator Oscar Murillo, portion Galleria Continua has among others an untitled Kapoor alabaster alongside works by Nikhil Chopra, curator of the 2025 Kochi Muziris Biennale. The show astatine Carpenters Workshop includes Dutch creator Marteen Baas’s Self Portrait Clock.

In the outdoor space, Italian-British creator duo Claire Fontaine’s site-specific installation “Foreigners Everywhere” sees them respond to India with lettering successful Indian languages, the signage with words specified arsenic “Swatara Bharat” and “Har Jagah Videshi”. Curated by Andrea Anastasio, besides arsenic portion of the series, their works are being showcased astatine assorted locations crossed the Capital, including Khoj Studios, Sundar Nursery, and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.

Exhibition by assorted artists astatine India Art Fair, Okhla NSIC ground, successful New Delhi connected Thursday, February 06, 2025. Express photograph by Abhinav Saha

The people’s canvas

This twelvemonth marks a historical archetypal – the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum of Jaipur steps retired of its palace confines to contiguous “We the People,” featuring tribunal creator Ramji Das’s revolutionary 18th-century watercolors. These portraits of palace workers – from guards to barbers to nursemaids -– connection a uncommon glimpse into lives usually mislaid to history.

Gallery Ske has Sudarshan Shetty’s enactment successful pink, from 1 of his aboriginal solos “Paper Moon” successful 1995. At Nature Morte, Bharti Kher’s “A Thousand Faces” successful chromatic contemplates aggregate identities, and Subodh Gupta has viewers focusing connected images that play arsenic portion of “Mars Kitchen,” his installation with utensils that reimagines the room arsenic a portal to the future.

At Vadehra Art Gallery, Atul Dodiya ponders the contiguous and the past successful “Weeping Ancestors,” featuring portraits of humanities figures specified arsenic Nana Fadnavis, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Tatya Tope. Narayan Chandra Biswas returns to Palette Gallery with metallic works successful architectural designs created with a woody finish. At Exhibit 320, Deepak Kumar has a chopped helping of an eagle successful bronze to signify the harm to the environment, successful the enactment Garuda, “The Silent Flight.”

Ankon Mitra has viewers walking into his immersive installation based connected the Hevajra Mandala, and Aspura (a assemblage of collectible carpets) has an intrigued assemblage lasting earlier Rashid Rana’s pixelated images woven unneurotic successful a enactment inspired by an antique Kashan rug.

At Chemould Prescott, N S Harsha has his monkey pointing towards the entity successful the bronze “Sprouting Philosopher,” that emerges from the artist’s involvement successful “new proposals” for ways of life.

At the IAF, each 120 exhibitors alteration Delhi into a surviving assemblage wherever contented isn’t simply preserved but continuously reinvented. It’s a abstraction wherever yesterday’s masters stock walls with tomorrow’s visionaries, and wherever the boundaries betwixt craft, people art, and modern look blur into thing thrillingly new.