Couldn’t make it to the India Art Fair? Here’s what happened

More than 50 art exhibitions opened in the capital in time for, and alongside, the India Art Fair (IAF). These were in addition to the stacked calendar of private dinners, parties and receptions hosted for the art world which congregated in the city. Since its establishment in 2008, IAF has successfully carved out a moment in the cultural calendar for its home city. A coordinated slot when the work taking place privately in artist studios, collections and archives comes out in public view.

The weekend before the fair, a group of artists, professors, coders and students were in the audience of the Khoj International Artists’ Association’s symposium on digital and machine-oriented life today, held at the Goethe-Institut. The symposium picked cues from a concurrently running exhibition at Khoj’s Khirkee space and the DLF Avenue Mall in Saket, asking the question ‘Are You Human?’. On the agenda were delivery apps, AI (artificial intelligence), online love scams and more. We were also given some creative solutions. Artist Tara Kelton’s project, for example, manipulated a digital gig-work platform to ‘donate’ moments of rest to its workers.

A cascade of exhibitions followed, with Defence Colony’s growing set of well-regarded galleries opening shows on the same evening (two days before IAF), as is now tradition. Pieces of Mumbai and Chennai were lodged in GallerySKE and PHOTOINK. Artist Sudarshan Shetty’s film, A Breath Held Long, highlighted Mumbai’s alternating quiet and deafening roar, and upstairs, photographer Ketaki Sheth captured Bollywood and Kollywood’s 1980s-90s film sets in black-and-white photographs, with the familiar faces of Rekha, Kamal Haasan and Dilip Kumar caught between takes.

Dodiya and Kallat give pause

At Vadehra Art Gallery, veteran artist Atul Dodiya’s large new paintings reflected on the experience of looking at art itself, with paintings within paintings, including viewers within the frame. A few days later, at a talk on the art market in the IAF auditorium, gallerist Roshini Vadehra revealed that the entire body of work was sold out before the exhibition even opened.

It was not possible to race through Jitish Kallat’s exhibition, Conjectures on a Paper Sky, at Bikaner House, nor digest it completely. It was useful instead, to pick one topic or motif and follow its evolution through the artworks made over the last decade. Take space governance. Large ‘sheets’ of the 1979 UN Moon Treaty prohibiting the national ownership or military use of the moon were crumpled and strewn at the entrance, as if a wasted idea. Later, a woven tangle of highway signs included distances to planets and galaxies alongside those to cities such as Melbourne and Rishikesh. Drawings interpreting a cold-war era transmission to the stars were made on paper dyed with a beige-tone known as ‘cosmic latte’, the average colour of light in space. Here was an artist “asking how the world is known, measured, and imagined”, as curator Alexandra Munroe, of the Guggenheim, explained.

From Weiwei to Mehta

On the opening day, the fair’s aisles were dotted with purposeful museum heads and private collectors. Galleries such as Vadehra, David Zwirner and Rajiv Menon Contemporary reported to have sold many, if not most, high-value works available in their booths. Among Zwirner’s highlight sales was a photograph by German artist Wolfgang Tillmans. Photography, often sidelined in art market conversations, has been increasingly prominent at the fair. The photography-only gallery PHOTOINK received the fair’s inaugural ‘best booth’ title from an independent jury. “The last five years have seen rapid growth,” said founder Devika Daulet Singh, noting the role of private museum and collection acquisitions in sparking interest from an expanded, older collector base for the medium.

Later in the day, the mood shifted with programmes starting around the fairgrounds and larger groups coming through. In the afternoon, 30 Indian artists under 30 years of age were recognised by ART India magazine, in an award ceremony with Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama.

The next day, a packed room at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) listened to iconoclast Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei speak during his first ever visit to India — spanning his life, dissident work, and India’s political economy viz-a-viz China. The conversation was hosted outside the museum’s newly opened retrospective exhibition of Tyeb Mehta, a champion of Indian modernism best known for his auction-record-breaking paintings of Kali and Mahishasura.

Among Mehta’s quotes scattered throughout Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being) was one emphasising the importance of Indian art to have a dialogue beyond national borders — “minding one’s business would be suicidal in our situation,” he wrote to his friend and contemporary, Krishen Khanna. As if taking cue, the museum has been working vigorously with arts organisations internationally. It recently announced a new director, Manuel Rabate, currently finishing his time at the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, and who will oversee KNMA’s expansion into a new sprawling million-square-feet building in Delhi.

Craft gets its due

Artworks that explore the history and delicacy of textiles travelled from the Cheongju Craft Biennale in South Korea to the National Craft Museum & Hastkala Academy. Notable highlights were a series of flags produced by Korean artist Young In Hong working with a women’s craft community in Kutch, and in an almost hidden second room, Bengaluru-based artist Kaimurai’s almost-devotional installation of indigo-dyed cloth.

At IAF, conversations on craft have been ongoing for many editions now. It adopted ‘design’, a sister-field to art, as a dedicated section two years ago. This year, artist Natasha Preenja, also known as Princess Pea, was awarded the first-ever Swali Craft Prize, an initiative by Karishma Swali and the Chanakya Foundation alongside the fair to create tangible support for those renewing handcraft traditions.

Focus on the grassroots

Adjoining the halls dedicated to commercial galleries, a tent was dedicated to non-profit organisations and special artist projects. Sidhant Kumar showed Studies from a Quiet Harvest, his long-term research into heavy-metal pollution in West Delhi, where he is now based, in the Prameya Art Foundation booth. An installation by Mumbai artist Teja Gavankar, Breathe, which came to the fair from the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, had a thatched structure that moved like gills, ‘breathing’ in response to visitors’ weights when they sat on a hinged bench.

The fair’s Learning Space was activated by Assam’s Anga Art Collective, and Patiala-based Kulpreet Singh paid attention to threatened animal, plant and fungi species in an adjoining installation, both presented by KNMA. A snapshot, in a way, of the country’s current art scene.

Arthshila, a newly opened industrial building close to the IAF grounds in Okhla, captured the past 50 years of the leading edge of Indian contemporary art. Some of the most remarkable works by artists supported by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation were curated across the building, talking to one another across generations. Particularly arresting were Prajakta Potnis’ haunting image of a frozen egg for use in a future emergency, Sahej Rahal’s co-controller video game set in a post-apocalyptic world, and Abul Hisham’s hazy paintings and intricate wooden beams.

As always, during the closing hours of IAF, its large group of interns and volunteers posed for a group picture in front of the fair’s tent facade. Many return year after year.

The conclusion of the fair week means much-awaited rest for those working behind the scenes. But many of the exhibitions remain open for the rest of us to catch in the months to come. And outside the gallery spaces, don’t miss the 10th Lodhi Art Festival and a new architectural pavilion, Aranyani, at Sunder Nursery.

The writer is an arts professional, offering an insider’s view on the scene.