Beauty guide: All about the India Art Fair
Editor’s note: Raghav pulls together all the weird and wonderful things to expect from this year’s flagship India Art Fair. The guide offers must-see eye candy—and an excellent gateway to India’s biggest and most important art mela.
PS: India Art Fair started on Thursday. We featured our faves in our daily edition. This is a republished version of that Big Story.
Written by: Raghav Bikhchandani, Editorial Manager
Wtf is the India Art Fair, anyway?
An art fair is basically a large-scale exhibition space for art galleries and art dealers. The goal is not just to see the art but also to offer an alternative to auction houses—which means you get to buy the art and take it home! Think: a bigger-budget version of those Scholastic or book fairs:)
The backstory: Established in 2008 by Sunil Gautam and Neha Kirpal as India Art Summit, the fair is now owned and organised by British events firm Angus Montgomery. What started out as a niche trade platform—at New Delhi’s old-school conventions hub Pragati Maidan—has since expanded to become the flagship event for the country’s—scratch that—the subcontinent’s art world, held annually at the newer and fancier NSIC Exhibition Grounds.
About Indian Art Fair 2025: It is a four-day affair—starting from today till Sunday. With 116 exhibitors—including 78 galleries and 25 major art institutions—this year’s edition will be the biggest yet! What to expect:
With a vision to “democratise art”, the annual fair, which stands as South Asia’s largest commercial art event, spotlights some of the country’s best classical and contemporary artworks… It also features a curated selection of avant-garde digital installations, immersive performance art, interactive workshops, and an expansive design section, thoughtfully crafted to resonate with audiences across generations.
Good to know: Tickets start at Rs. 800. You can get them from bookmyshow. For more about the art fair, check out their website here.
Ok, can I see the art now?
Yes, of course! Below are the just some of the pieces we’re most excited about:
One: We kick things off with Pooja Singhal’s reinterpretation of a 400-year-old tradition—Pichvai. Originating from Nathdwara in Rajasthan, this form features elaborate devotional imagery, particularly to Krishna. Singhal’s mash-up of the modern with the tradition shows in her embracing of subtly varied colour schemes and boxy shapes to depict devotion—as you can see in ‘Daan Leela’ below. Booth number: D05.
Two: Next up is the vast roster of Exhibit 320, which focuses on elevating younger non-mainstream talent. From the war on Gaza to the moon’s changing shapes, no topic, style or material is off limits. Our favourite is Kaushik Saha’s ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ series, featuring wonderfully labyrinthine acrylic work like this:
We are also looking forward to Deena Pindoria’s series which uses natural dye prints on handwoven kala cotton and kota doria fabrics to create beautiful portraits such as this one below. Booth number: C05.
Three: Speaking of curious cabinets, below is a lovely almirah from Nynika Jhaveri’s Studio Nyn. Marvel at the wonderful woodwork on display, as the Bombay-based architect teams up with Manipuri artist Thamshangpa Maku to transform this teak. Booth number: G04.
Four: Mainstays of the experimental art scene since 2010, Latitude 28 live up to their name by bringing the deepest lineup with styles spanning far and wide. The common link: they’re all so damn evocative. Amid the more intricate offerings, we can’t look past the profound simplicity in Shubham Kumar’s ‘Anuman Lagata Hua Khet’. Hailing from Gaya in Bihar, Kumar uses watercolours to reflect on riots—the farmland in focus is bathed in hues of blue. Booth number: C06.
Five: Sticking with sizable squads, Bombay’s Chemould Prescott Road are featuring a dozen artists with varying levels of experience. Having been in this business for over 60 years, however, they’re the fair’s stalwarts. The stand-outs here are Dhruvi Acharya’s darkly humourous ‘as the world burns’ series, starring female protagonists and their unspoken powerful sentiments. Booth number: B02.
Six: Embracing the contemporary, Blueprint 12 is a treasure trove of pop art and photography—particularly from South India and Sri Lanka. Sifting through the reverence and homages towards pioneers like Andy Warhol, it’s a nice surprise seeing the wide wardrobe array that makes up Indu Antony’s ‘Cecilia’d’ album. Booth number: F04.
Seven: And now for an Ambedkarite outdoor exhibition, with shades of James Baldwin. Backed by Art and Charlie, Yogesh Barve’s ‘I Am Not Your Dalit’ centres on LED stickers suspended in the air—and containing Ambedkar’s writings on caste and social justice. To call this ‘unique’ in the context of the rest of the fair would be an understatement.
Eight: This one’s for the proper rainforest nerds. Bangalore-based KYNKYNY centres its exhibition on the work of Sandilya Theuerkauf, who hails from Wayanad. Having grown up around a botanical sanctuary, he gets weird, wild and wonderful with plants and trees endemic to the region. He’s such a natural at bringing bark textures together that it simply boggles the mind—case in point below. Booth number: L03.
Nine: One of the age-old questions that comes up about any piece of art is, “Method or madness?” Quite often, there’ll be a method in the madness—or at least that’s what this exhibitor seems to be hinting at. Hailing from Bombay’s Kala Ghoda neighbourhood (with a new gallery in Delhi’s Defence Colony), Method has a penchant for bridging the gap between busy street art and fancier futuristic work. Have a gander at Kunel Gaur’s use of a Kodak case, for instance, complete with the Amazon label. Booth number: F05.
Ten: From fanciful futurism to imaginative dystopia, we come to Anant Art. Having been in the game for over 20 years, they’re known for some disparate yet uncompromising collections. Digbijayee Khatua’s reliance on bright solid colours may evoke memories of ‘The Sims’ video games, while also making you fear looking at a modern condo ever again. Booth number: B13.
Eleven: Established in 2001, PHOTOINK live up to their name by not only prioritising the painstaking preservation of archival work but also getting creative with contemporary choices. This year’s Art Fair curation features a wealth of photo albums from Ahmed Ali and Ketaki Sheth but the star of the show is Dinabandhu Das’ ‘Through the Looking Glass’ series, put together in collaboration with the Institute of Orphaned, Invisible and Obscure Images (IOIOI). Booth number: B03.
Twelve: At Crayon Art Gallery, antiquities are the order of the day—specifically European art set in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. William Daniell, Thomas Daniell and Edwin Lord Weeks form the star trio of this exhibit—our fave is Weeks’ oil canvas simply titled ‘A Cup of Coffee’. Booth number: B20.
Thirteen: Hailing from Hyderabad, Art Fair debutants Nolwa Studio use Bidri—a medieval metal inlay craftwork tradition from Karnataka—to create snazzy household items that appear futuristic. There’s a diamond-shaped mirror, a tectonic bar cabinet and a ripple-y minimalist coffee table on offer, but the major must-see is this wall-mounted horizon lamp. Booth number: I05.
Fourteen: We’ll leave you with this offering from ‘Peers Continuum: A Relay of Reciprocity’—a sister exhibition of the fair by Khoj Studios. Prathap Modi’s piece is equal parts cosmic and trippy in all the best ways.
Also on display: British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel and lacquer Garnet to Pagan Gold satin and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s 2023 Neolithic Vase Merged with Toy Bricks. They are featured at Galleria Continua and Lisson Gallery, respectively.
Dali in Delhi: If you can't make it to the Fair this weekend, fear not—until February 12, you can head to India Habitat Centre's Visual Arts Gallery to see the first ever Salvador Dali exhibition on Indian shores.
