Art Mumbai 2025: Women artists in focus at the new Sculpture Park
At the third edition of Art Mumbai, starting on 13 November, women artists are breaking stereotypes about sculptors
A monumental cast bronze sculpture by Meera Mukherjee, titled Balance, offers a window to the artist’s thought process. On one of the panels, a man sits with a weighing scale. On the other side are two women balancing pots on their heads. Like most of Mukherjee’s practice, this sculptural piece also features the “juxtaposition of purusha and prakriti, and the idea of gendered labour". The relief work offers a softness to the mammoth metal panels, creating a delicate sense of equilibrium. Balance, the largest of Mukherjee’s non-public sculptures, will be on show at the Sculpture Park, a special segment curated by Veerangana Solanki at the upcoming Art Mumbai 2025.
This section focuses on women artists shaping sculptural languages in India. With works placed in both indoor and outdoor settings at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse, the Sculpture Park investigates the female gaze at scale and materials such as ceramics, steel, bronze, fibreglass and found material. A number of artists, including Adeela Suleiman, Chetnaa, Madhvi Parekh, Savia Mahajan, Shambhavi Singh and Sudipta Das, address themes such as identity, migration, labour and collective memory.
“The Sculpture Park is enmeshed within the overall layout of the fair. It acts as a great navigational tool to Art Mumbai, and ties in well with our continued focus on topics related to women in the arts," says Minal Vazirani, who has co-founded Art Mumbai with her husband Dinesh and gallerists Conor Macklin and Nakul Dev Chawla. “Last year, we had a talk on women artists in conflict zones and the year before that on institutional representation for women in the arts.
AN EXCITING LINE-UP
The third edition of Art Mumbai is all set to take place from 13-16 November. It continues to position itself as “a gateway to global conversations in art". This year, the fair features 82 exhibitors from India and abroad, including 17 new entrants. Some of the galleries are showing newer bodies of works commissioned just for the event. Besides the Sculpture Park, another highlight is a special presentation dedicated to the late modernist Tyeb Mehta, organised by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and Saffronart Foundation in association with the Tyeb Mehta Foundation.
The speaker series with leading figures from the art world continues to be integral to the fair with discussions on how art from South Asia, including India, continues to gain global prominence. Some of the speakers include Lydia Yee, Deepanjana Klein, Gayatri Sinha and Zehra Jumabhoy.The programming also includes robust public performances, guided walks and curated tours highlighting different artistic practices.
The cultural landscape across India is acquiring greater depth with new micro fairs coming up in different cities and existing festivals going from strength to strength. This year, India Art Fair’s inaugural IAF EDI+IONS took place in Hyderabad (1-2 November) in a bid to have city specific programming and strengthen art hubs across the country. The inaugural edition of the Jodhpur Arts Week, an endeavour by the Public Arts Trust of India, took place in October. Next month, Kochi will play host to the sixth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by Nikhil Chopra and HH Art Spaces Goa. It will feature the work of 66 artists/collectives from over 25 countries. In December, Panjim will turn into a backdrop for the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Serendipity Arts Festival, with an expanded set of curators and interdisciplinary projects.
Art Mumbai too has emerged as a significant part of this ecosystem. According to the organisers, it highlights South Asia’s artistic depth, technological innovation, and Mumbai’s growing stature in the region’s art calendar. “There has been a 60% increase in the number of exhibitors from the first year. This allows us to present a wider range of artists from across geographies to the visitors. We are also expecting a growth of a little over 100 per cent in the number of visitors this time over year one," shares Vazirani.
TALKING POINT
The speaker series, supported by KNMA, looks at the impact of South Asia on global art and vice versa, and will give a stage to some of the region’s best known artists and collectors. Vazirani cites the example of Dutch business consultant Kito de Boer who has been a collector for more than 25 years and knows the region well, having spent time in India as well as West Asia. He will be in conversation with Kiran Nadar. “He has an important perspective on how the art market has developed here," says Vazirani.
During her own extensive travels between 2024-25, she has come across a heightened engagement with south Asian art. “Institutions such as the Barbican, Tate Modern, Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco are featuring art from the subcontinent and the Middle East in a big way," she adds. “There was a significant representation of south Asian artists at La Biennale di Venezia last year. You can see a difference in the way the rest of the world is engaging with art from the region."
The speakers will also discuss the need for development of education, scholarship and infrastructure related to the arts in the global South, and the role that private collectors and foundations play. Another panel will contemplate the similarities and differences in modern art from the Arab world and India. This will accompany the exhibition Resonant Histories: India and the Arab World, curated by Puja Vaish and Suheyla Takesh, which will open on 14 November at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya.
CELEBRATING TYEB MEHTA
For many art enthusiasts, Tyeb Mehta, a key member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, is synonymous with breaking of records at auctions, be it for his 1989 painting Untitled (Kali) or his 1994 work Untitled (Woman on Rickshaw). Earlier this year, his 1956 painting Trussed Bull sold for ₹61.80 crore at Saffronart’s 25th Anniversary live auction, making it the second highest value work by an Indian artist sold at auction globally.
The retrospective, Tyeb Mehta: Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being), curated by Roobina Karode, director and chief curator, KNMA, will give visitors the opportunity to go beyond the artwork in the news and understand the depth and breadth of the late modernist’s practice. The solo presentation, which also marks Mehta’s centenary year, features early drawings and paintings alongside his iconic series such as Trussed Bull, Mahishasura, Falling Man, Kali and Diagonal. “Together they speak of Mehta as a ‘signal figure’ in Indian Art who held space for humanity through his art and life," states the curatorial note.
TELLING TACTILE STORIES
For curator Veerangana Solanki, the idea to focus on women sculptors took root last year when a lot of applications for the sculpture section were from male artists. “We didn’t want to spotlight women artists just for the sake of it but to recognise their style of storytelling. They often get overlooked when it comes to thinking about scale," she says. The presentation at the Sculpture Park hopes to break this notion. Take, for instance, Sudipta Das’s ceramic sculpture The Crowd that Carries the Sea, which features intricate detailing—a remarkable feat for a sculpture of that size.
Poojan Gupta, artist and researcher who works in London and Jaipur , has created an experimental sculpture featuring discarded pharmaceutical blister packs. “There is a certain tactility to the works. They beckon the visitors to come closer, making the viewing a remarkably intimate experience," says Solanki. Another interesting work is Playing for Time by Shiffali Wadhawan and Tapasya Gupta, which combines the nostalgia of Snakes and Ladders with the pertinent theme of environmental degradation.
The leaps and falls across the board game follow a cause-and-effect format. A snake, for instance, connects noxious fumes from a car with full face gas masks. Similarly, a ladder creates linkages between a young child saving water at home to healthy water bodies. “Visitors get to play this game. Different generations might engage with it differently. A child may play it to arrive at a winning point, while an adult might go through it thinking about sustainability," she says.
Natasha Singh’s Nadi Yogini, a new media project, is one of the outdoor sculptures. Using Artificial Intelligence, camera vision and coding, the artist explores the patterns of yogic movement, “tracing the geometries of the body’s motion through creative technology," states the artist note. The resulting sculpture is rendered through 3D printing.
The Sculpture Park shows how artists such as Mukherjee, Adeela Suleiman and Tayeba Begum Lipi have created unique narratives with the same material of metal. “Works by the three artists are placed in the vicinity of one another. Suleiman and Begum Lipi have worked with stainless steel. The latter has addressed a deeply personal narrative around the use of razor blades in an everyday object. But even that article of daily use might have an edge to it that would make you retract from it.Working with metal requires strength, but each of these artists have shown that that should not be a limiting factor," says Solanki.
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