Jaipur Art Week 5.0: An incubator for emerging and experimental practices

When the former ruler of Jaipur, Sawai Madho Singh II, decided to sail the seas in 1902 to attend King Edward VII’s coronation in England, it created quite a stir. An ocean voyage was considered a sin at the time, polluting the soul and leading to a loss of caste. The only way the Maharaja could circumvent that was by participating in a host of rituals, which included carting thousands of litres of Ganga jal on his ship to London. Flash forward a century and the story provides a springboard for multidisciplinary artist Boris Colin Alphonse’s installation, What We Carry When We Cross, at the upcoming Jaipur Art Week: Edition 5.0. (JAW 5.0).

Alphonse’s speculative artwork at the Gyan Museum consists of a fragmented ship hull accompanied by diagrammatic instructions. “The work invites viewers to imagine their own contemporary kala pani: the boundaries they fear crossing, the rituals they invent for protection, and the materials—visible or invisible— that they would choose to carry. The ship becomes less a vehicle of travel than a tool for reflection,” explains the artist. Alphonse is one of 15 artists who have a solo presentation at this edition of JAW.

Besides these solos, the works of more than 100 artists will be showcased in group and digital exhibitions spread across multiple venues in the pink city. Organised by the Public Arts Trust of India (PATI), the event is billed as an incubator for early and mid-career artists that encourages experimentation. The 2026 edition received over 450 submissions through an international open call and the final selection of artists was made by a jury comprising gallerist Renu Modi, the artist duo John Wood and Paul Harrison, curator Aindrea Emelife and Sana Rezwan, the founding chairwoman of PATI. “What struck me was the sheer variety, use of materials and ideas that were submitted as well as the current issues they addressed such as gender, migration, memory and ecology,” says Modi. “They are mixing craft and technology in a very contemporary and innovative way.”

She is particularly excited to see how participating artist Poojan Gupta’s work has shaped up. Gupta’s installation, A Sacred Walk, at Jaipur’s Central Park draws its inspiration from the architectural layout of temples. Nearly 51,000 discarded pharmaceutical blister packs have been stitched together to create a corridor of light with the perforations producing a jaalilike effect. For the artist, each empty pocket marks a moment in time, a temporal journey towards someone’s personal healing. “And I find this moving. This has informed five years of experimentation with these empty packs,” she says. “I see this work as a reminder that the sacred and the everyday coexist, and can shift our perspective about looking at an empty blister pack beyond just a waste.”

To hone their ideas, the artists were offered a mentorship programme by senior practitioners such as Gigi Scaria, Thukral & Tagra and Vibha Galhotra. Scaria, who has been casting his sculptures in Jaipur for several years, guided the artists on which site best suited their artworks. He is also a featured artist in this edition and will showcase a bronze and white metal sculptural work, Ascend towards the unknown. “The mentorship programme is definitely a unique idea for a public art project. The ideas go through an interesting filtration through the process. It is beneficial for everyone involved,” he says.

Nature-based artist and bio-designer Kaanchi Chopra, for one, has benefited greatly from the mentorship of artist duo Thukral & Tagra. “They encouraged me to think more ambitiously about scale. Their guidance pushed me to expand the work spatially, resulting in an eight-feet-tall, 9.5-foot-diameter circular steel structure that houses eight floral panels mapping the region’s flora,” says Chopra, “This shift allowed the work to move from an intimate archive to an immersive installation.”

Chopra’s artwork, The Earth Laughs in Flowers, is based on her ethnobotanical knowledge of the Aravali range. The flora incorporated into the installation has been foraged and preserved from the region and includes native species such as Bandar ki Roti, Kachnar, Kaner, Khair, Khejri, Neem, Palash, Peepal, and Shahtoot. Chopra says, “Functioning as a living botanical archive, the installation reflects the biodiversity of the Aravalis at a moment of increasing erasure, insisting on attention to what remains rooted, what is being lost, and what still longs to be protected.”

Also addressing the landscape and notions of loss is Aditi Aggarwal’s sculptural-digital installation, As We Rise: The Last Pillar of the Fort. A reflection on climate, memory, and the slow collapse of inherited worlds, the photomontage panels and projections create a suspended landscape that moves between decay and regeneration, maintaining the past and speculative futures in a state of tension. With their out-of-the-box ideas and use of unconventional materials, the multidisciplinary artists in this edition of the Jaipur Art Week are clearly pushing artistic boundaries. More pertinently, they are bringing to the surface issues that need our urgent attention in a manner that is both immersive and interactive.

The Jaipur Art Week runs from 27 January to 3 February

Meera Menezes is a Delhi-based art critic, writer and curator.