The heightened sense of anticipation at the India Art Fair 2019 cuts like a knife through the clouds of winter smog hanging low over the NSIC Grounds of the capital. The shows of note at the festival are many, by a number of acclaimed artists from India and overseas, but a few names have everybody’s attention piqued like icicles in a snow storm.

The name on everybody’s mind seems to be of the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose selected works will be on show, hosted by Berlin-based gallery neugerriemschneider, who’re making their debut exhibit at the fair. You could expect glimpses of Weiwei’s works across sculpture, film, photography, and music, while documentations of his mammoth installations would leave a lot to the imagination.The India Art Fair, is now in its 11th edition, led by Fair Director Jagdip Jagpal, with upto 75 leading galleries in attendance.

Slowing down time
When it comes to the artist Tayeba Begum Lipi from Bangladesh, those sentiments can tend to go overboard — into highly strung, emotionally perilous territory. Tayeba, who has rapidly gained her place in the international spotlight over the last year, will present her first solo show at the festival, titled Vanity Fair, curated by Anushka Rajendran, and hosted by Shrine Empire.

Unheard voices
The noteworthy projects, meanwhile, are aplenty. Consider Delhi-based artist Baaraan Ijlal’s sound installation Change Room, of recordings of people’s narratives and conversations about fear, anxiety and loneliness; artist and Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura’s video work, a part of an ongoing project titled The Coast, exploring a frighteningly fast-changing, post-truth world; and a “filmic diary of light” by Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya, titled We Step and Do Not Step Into the Same River, presented as a meditation “often overlooked poetics of the everyday”.

Architect Pinakin Patel offers a playful response to the idea of idol worship, where viewers are invited to paint a rock placed in the centre of the booth with turmeric and vermillion, as a part of the project, Food for Thought, Thought for Creativity, Creativity for Life. In The Layer, Avadh-born artist Neha Verma creates an installation out of papers delicately cut to look like carpets, in an exquisite showcase of craftsmanship.

Elsewhere, the assemblages turn chaotic, as in artist and environmental activist Ravi Agarwal’s mixed-media installation The Desert of the Anthropocene, which recreates an industrialised landscape with text, photographs, videos and objects.India Art Fair 2019 is on at the NSIC Grounds, New Delhi until February 3, 2019.