16 shows you need to visit this summer for the best of South Asian art

New Delhi

Seer-Seen by Sujith SN

The show comprises a series of landscapes engulfed by the temporary feeling of loitering with a purpose. These are contemporary landscapes and in its broad definition connotes terrain but its occupants is the painter alone. 

March 5 to March 29, Vadehra Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi, Vadehraart.com

Keeping Score by Neerja Kothari

Kolkata-based artist Neerja Kothari’s work deals with the investigation of the absurd. This show is an attempt at trying to quantify an unquantifiable experience. So get ready for a mind-twister, with these minimal and achromatic abstract works. 

March 13 to April 11, Gallery Shrine Empire, D-395, Defence Colony, New Delhi, Shrineempiregallery.com 

Silently…A Proposed Plan for Rethinking the Urban Fabric by Pooja Iranna

This show spans the breath of Pooja Iranna’s work. Her works are an endeavour to capture the sensations of a city as experienced by individuals, and not as designed by architects and planners. For lovers of art that questions the urban, this is a must-visit. 

March 13 to March 22, Bikaner House, Pandara Road, India Gate, New Delhi, Aicongallery.com 

Selected Works by Jogen Chowdhury 

The show comprises 40 significant works by the artist as part of a travelling exhibition by Vadehra Art Gallery, featuring a collection from the Glenbarra Art Museum in Himeji, Japan. The exhibit spans four decades of work by the artist, with the earliest work on view from 1965. 

March 21 to April 5, Bikaner House, Pandara Road, India Gate, New Delhi, Vadehraart.com

Inner Dimension-Outer Dimension by Sunil Gawde

The dichotomy between reality and perception is the leitmotif of Sunil Gawde’s sculptures, paintings and installations. Enjoy the absurd and paradoxical through his works that highlight soft vs hard, round vs sharp, presence vs absence and sense vs sensibility. 

March 27 to April 29, Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi, Galleryespace.com

CIMA Art Mela at Visual Arts Gallery

CIMA’s much coveted event that aims to bring together art works of upcoming and established artists under one roof at prices that allow for a much larger access to young collectors. Featuring the work of 80 artists, this fair has been conceptualised to influence change in purchasing patterns of art. 

April 3 to April 5, Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, Cimaartindia.com 

Mumbai

Breathing on Mirrors by Anju Dodiya 

Monosyllabic conversations and mimicking telephone emoticons, Anju Dodiya has confined the drawings at her show to a theatre of emotion. The soft mattresses that serve as a base of these pieces, hint at the domestic nature of her works. 

February 29 to April 4, Chemould Prescott Road, Queens Mans, 3rd Floor G Talwarkar Marg, Fort, Mumbai, Gallerychemould.com

Don’t Ask Me About Colour by Mehlli Gobhai 

This retrospective, curated by Ranjit Hoskote and Nancy Adajania, bears witness to nearly 70 years of Mehlli Gobhai’s art. Works include for the viewing public, for the first time, the extraordinary and remarkably fresh polychrome paintings that mark Gobhai’s transition from a figurative and representational style to abstraction. 

March 7 to April 25, NGMA, Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall, MG Road, Mumbai, Gallerychemould.com

Heavy To Light, Light To Heavy by Mark Prime 

The show evokes the rhythm, soundscape and material environment of a factory within a gallery, exposing the disorder that lies behind the production of precise objects and artworks. Prime’s sculptures arrest fluidity and play with chance. 

March 12 to April 11, Chatterjee & Lal, 01/18 Kamal Mansion, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba, Mumbai, Chatterjeeandlal.com

Table Manners 2.0 by various artists

Curated by artists Shyonti Salve and Adil Writer, this show asks artists to drop all metaphors and react to the idea of beauty in functional handmade tableware. The show comprises 19 artists who have worked either on usable works and wall murals. 

March 20 to March, Gallery Art & Soul, 11, Madhuli, Shivsagar Estate, Worli, Mumbai, Galleryartnsoul.com

Goa

A Time That Was by Pushpamala N., Waswo X. Waswo & Ipshita Maitra 

The show depicts three periods in Goa’s history and becomes the starting point from where perceptions of belonging and identity are questioned and re-negotiated. Pushpamala N’s The Arrival of Vasco da Gama is a re-enactment of 1898 orientalist painting by José Veloso Salgado; Longtimers by Waswo X. Waswo are hand-painted photographs of hippies from the 1970’s; and in Once was Home, Ipshita Maitra documents change in neighbourhoods using photographic methods that are now redundant. 

April 14 to June 20, Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts, 63/C-8, Near Army House, Altinho, Panaji, Goa, Sgcfa.org

Kolkata

Stone Is A Forehead by Biraaj Dodiya 

The title of Biraaj Dodiya’s first solo is a reference to The Laid Out Body, a part of the poem Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias by Federico García Lorca commemorating the death of a friend. This body of work takes the form of a lament; bringing together youth and mortality, personal memory and coming of age, absence and distance and announces a major artistic debut. 

March 6 to June 30, Experimenter, 2/1, Hindusthan Road, Dover Terrace, Ballygunge, Kolkata, Experimenter.in 

New York

Pull With A Direction by Nasreen Mohamedi

The show includes a selection of works, some of which are being exhibited for the first time, date from the late 1950s until the 1970s, offering a rare glimpse of Mohamedi’s working process in its incipient form. Wide ranging works emerge from landscapes, gestural ink drawings, experimentation in photography, paint on canvas and eventually arriving at her grid drawings. 

February 29 to June 27, Talwar Gallery, 108 East, 16th Street, New York, Talwargallery.com

Entertainment Erases History by Peter Nagy

It is rare for an artist to double as a gallerist successfully. Peter Nagy has accomplished this from the early stages of his career, beginning in New York and later in New Delhi, India. The show focuses on the iconic decade in Nagy’s career in New York between 1982 and 1992. The entirely in black-and-white works critique traditional methods of representation by adopting a minimalist spirit of seriality and repetition. 

March 6 to April 25, Jeffrey Deitch, 18, Wooster Street, New York, Deitch.com

How Will I Know by Salman Toor 

For his first museum solo exhibition, Salman Toor presents new and recent oil paintings. Known for his small-scale figurative works that combine academic technique and a quick, sketch-like style, Toor offers intimate views into the imagined lives of young, queer Brown men residing between New York City and South Asia. 

March 20 to July 5, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, Whitney.org

Dubai

Such A Morning by Amar Kanwar

A feature-length film installation, which premiered internationally at documenta 14 in Athens, is a fictional narrative which follows two central characters who grapple with a hallucinatory world is a parable for the complex challenges of our times. Kanwar asks: “What is it that lies beyond, when all arguments are done with? How to reconfigure and respond again?” 

January 20 to May 20, Ishara Art Foundation, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, Ishara.org

Also read:

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Will 2020 be the year for women artists?

28 exhibitions worth travelling for in 2020