Art and about: An autumn calendar
Editor’s note: Mekhala Singhal has put together a list of the best exhibitions currently on view in your city, be it contemporary or traditional art. Check out our autumn art calendar for art exhibitions and artists on view in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Santiniketan.
Written by: Mekhala Singhal
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Recipes of the Self
Fatema Halvadwala
DMY (Dua Ma Yaad - Keep me in your Prayers)
A conversation between mother and daughter runs as the thread that connects the works of this exhibition. Fatema Halvadwala draws attention to food as blessing, especially as it continues to be withheld from the people of Palestine while the genocide rages on. Her works remind the viewer of the power of food, how it brings people together, carries culture and memories, and how it can be used as a weapon during violent times.
Where: Strangers House
When: October 7
Vinita Mungi, Hasmukh Makwana
A Date with Twilight (2025), Hasmukh Makwana
Nature includes everything—even us. These artists bring to life a ‘garden’ of beings, communities, objects, and more, creating an ecosystem where new and undiscovered worlds emerge, where the natural meets the fantastical.
Where: Chemould Colab
When: Until October 10
Untitled, Manish Chavda
What makes a garden a garden? This question emerges as multiple artists across various mediums come together for this exhibition. The works focus on plant ecologies, rituals, animals, and the cultural histories that define our relationships with nature. The garden becomes something that is made and remade constantly over time.
Where: Rukshaan Art Gallery
When: Until October 11
Parag Tandel
Vitamin Sea Archives: Sediments of Intelligence - 5, 2026
Yarn and found materials wound around metal structures represent the stories of Mumbai’s Koli fishing communities in this solo exhibition by Mumbai-based artist Parag Tandel (with text by Natasha Ginwala). He uses sculpture, cyanotype, textile, and archival research to tell these stories; Tandel also works with Habur stone, a material from Jaisalmer, to cast oil pipes and marine life-forms.
Where: Tarq
When: Until October 17
Jake Grewal
Held Still (2026)
Jake Grewal’s faceless figures with diffused outlines wander through the scenes set in his paintings, seemingly merging into the melancholic backgrounds. Grewal’s paintings and figures occupy a sort of ‘middle world’—having grown up with an Indian parent but only having visited India recently—sometimes in the shadows, sometimes by a body of water.
Where: Jhaveri Contemporary
When: Until October 17
Ragini Bhow
Double Helix, 2026
This exhibition gets its title from an existing botanical phenomenon. Bolting usually occurs in harsh climates, when extreme conditions cause plants to flower early in order to redirect energy towards seed production. Spanning paintings on wood along with metal sculptures, the works embody this idea of transition and adaptation, and of self-preservation in hard times.
Where: Nature Morte
When: October 25
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PUNE
Burned Field & Woman (2025), Shubhankar Chandere
Memory, Nature, and Body are the three connected pillars of this three-part exhibition, that looks at the body not merely in its anatomical form but as something more, comprising abstractions and contradictions. The exhibition features 46 different artists, all of them either Pune-born or -based, with the project aiming to explore the many diverse artistic styles and talents that the city boasts. This leg of the exhibition treats nature as a force that moves and affects us, featuring works by, among others, Deepashri Dixit, Rachana Bajaj, Saurabh Talekar, Smita Kinkale.
Where: Vida Heydari Contemporary
When: Until October 17
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DELHI NCR
Nocturnes | Woodcut Engravings and Etchings
PD Dhumal
At Uttarayan (2018)
Printmaker and educator PD Dhumal’s two decades of work draws inspiration from ancient as well as contemporary styles and motifs, creating a language iconic to Dhumal. The themes in his work span desire and sensuality, featuring creatures such as bulls, snakes, birds, and more.
Where: Vadehra Art Gallery
When: Until October 5
Bikash Chandra Senapati
Because of You, I Exist (2026)
Senapati was born in Kendrapara, a coastal town of Odisha. Despite the various transitional periods of his life, including travel and migration across cities, the artist finds himself seeking peace and tranquility in the water bodies he grew up around—rivers. His work is inhabited by a sense of returning to familiar spaces, as well as a contradiction between the urban city and the rural town. He asks, poignantly, with the title of the exhibition, whether there is peace beyond the river.
Where: Gallery XXL
When: Until October 15
Where the River Bends, I Begin Again
Feroza Hakeem
My Loved Ones (2026)
A river moves through space by restructuring itself and the land around it. In this way, Feroza Hakeem’s works grant us visuals of changing lands and waters. They draw from her personal family history of displacement and migration. Hailing from a Hazara family originally from Quetta, a land that has witnessed violence and heavy militarisation, Hakeem’s work focuses on natural formations—hills, mountains, and trees as symbols of strength and resilience, reclaimed.
Where: Gallery Pristine Contemporary
When: Until October 23
Freedom to Form: Baroda Modern
Untitled (2000), KG Subramanyan
Gujarat’s significant impact on the arts scene in India is highlighted in this exhibition, which traces the history and legacy of Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda. MSU was India’s first post-Independence art school, and has, since its inception, changed the landscape of art and art education in the country. This show focuses on the works produced by the Faculty of Fine Arts at MSU, by both students and teachers.
Where: DAG
When: Until October 24
In-Rhythm
Bice Lazzari, Nasreen Mohamedi
Architettura azzurra (Azure Architecture) (1955), Bice Lazzari
This exhibition brings together the works of two artists who’d never met—one Indian, and one Italian. Despite not knowing each other personally, both Nasreen Mohamedi and Bice Lazzari developed a similar style around the same time, focusing on abstraction, geometry, and lines. The show explores how their works may be in conversation with each other, looking at how restraint has informed their processes—resulting in stunning pieces with their own movement and rhythms.
Where: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
When: September 27, 2026 – June 13, 2027
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BENGALURU
Sweat and Soil (2018), Indrajit Khambe
The act of wrestling involves bodies constantly grappling with each other—there is a sense of intimacy that emerges. While wrestling has been a part of India’s cultural history for centuries, it no longer receives the same kind of patronage. This exhibition of photography studies what exactly wrestling may be shaped by: class, gender, caste, and more.
Where: Museum of Art and Photography
When: Until November 1
A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling
Folio from a Kalpasutra manuscript (Queen Trishala’s dreams)
Curated by graphic novelist Amruta Patil, this exhibition charts the history of India’s modes of storytelling, and how narratives have been at the forefront of our artistic traditions for forever. As visual storytelling evolves over time, the 250 works here examine what the future of storytelling may look like, and how these traditional practices have shaped artists today.
Where: Museum of Art and Photography
When: Until November 15
Kaggantu (2025-2026), Dayananda Nagaraju
In the early 20th century, scientists determined that ours is a quantum world, one of probability, where several elements and events come together to create what we experience of the world. So very much of modern technology is built upon the systems of uncertainty and entanglement that this implies, and this exhibition allows viewers to enter a space where these ideas can be played with, understood, and visibilised.
Where: Science Gallery
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KOLKATA
Naeem Mohaiemen
Zahir Raihan, reversed revolutionary filmmaker and writer from Bangladesh who made the documentary Stop Genocide (1971), is at the heart of this solo exhibition by Naeem Mohaiemen, taking place alongside the Kolkata premier of Mohaiemen’s new film, A Missing Can of Film. The film intersperses material from Raihan’s films with footage shot by Mohaiemen in the aftermath of Bangladesh’s student uprising in 2024, in split-screen format. From landmark political events to film to personal history and art, this exhibition—using both film and paper—examines the role of archives and how they shape our understanding of the past.
Where: Experimenter (Hindustan Road)
When: Until October 10
Prabhakar Pachpute
This is the second edition of Pachpute’s work, featuring a variety of characters, creatures, and worlds within themselves in sculptures and paintings. The works confront difficult questions about social tensions, inner turmoil, and existential anxieties.
Where: Experimenter Outpost at Alipore Museum
When: Until October 17
Vivan Sundaram, Tapan Bhattacharyya
False Totality (2001, 2007, 2015), Tapan Bhattacharyya
This duo first met in 1997 when Bhattacharyya was an assistant to Sundaram for a project. With differing styles— Sundaram with strange, puzzling sculptures of human anatomy, and Bhattacharyya with gouache paintings of abstract figurines and creatures—the two are brought together for this exhibition.
Where: Akar Prakar
When: Until October 31
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SANTINIKETAN
Adip Dutta
The city takes the form of a layered archive in dense urban landscapes on paper. Viewers are offered an aerial vantage point with these works by Dutta, highlighting the various transformations the cityscape undergoes with time.
Where: Tokaroun, Santiniketan
When: Until October 29
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Mekhala Singhal is Assistant Editor at Advisory.
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