19 artworks to catch at the India Art Fair 2025

Everyday chronicles

At the Shrine Empire booth, engage with the works of contemporary women artists such as Divya Singh, Moonis Ijlal, Hema Shironi, Nandita Kumar and Baaraan Ijlal, who is displaying Safia and her Daughters. The artists have, in this showcase, tackled “themes of community politics, urban migration, ecology, gender and identity, erased histories” and more.

India's arty sojourn

A country that beckoned adventurers, conquerors and settlers from foreign shores, India also inspired artists, local and foreign, to paint vivid tales of its mythologies and landscapes nurturing artistic styles, mediums and contexts. Featuring works such as Bikash Chatterjee’s 1980 oil on canvas, With Flower, the DAG booth is presenting India Past and Present, an exhibition that explores the evolution of Indian art from the 18th to 21st century.

Blue lotus blooms

Don’t miss Lotus Pond at Noon, a monumental four- panel work by the late artist A. Ramachandran at the Sakshi Art Gallery booth. The flower had been a favourite motif of the artist in both his paintings and drawings. "When I start drawing beautiful lotus ponds, I make intricate lines born out of nature. When I do satire, the lines get distorted and create a comical effect. It is difficult to say how it happens, just like it is difficult to say how you express in words when you are angry or in love,” the artist had stated in a 2021-interview about his practice.

Also read: What to expect at the 16th edition of the India Art Fair

A big bowl of earth

Look for Geopolitical Drops, an installation by Trupti Patil created with agricultural soil and ash-infused resin cast, wheat spikes and wheat kernels embedded in clear epoxy and cast bronze, at the Project88 booth.

The artist-architect

It’s the centenary year of eminent artist and architect Satish Gujral. The Gujral Foundation is marking the milestone with the exhibition Ear to the Ground. Curated by Vishal K. Dar, the exhibition showcases Gujral’s remarkable oeuvre of architectural drawings, sculptural installations, rare mixed-media assemblages and photographs of his public murals.

Languages of identity

Conceptual artist-duo Claire Fontaine are set to create an LED installation that builds upon their acclaimed work, Foreigners Everywhere. The installation will have the duo reimagining the phrase “Foreigners Everywhere” in different Indian languages.

Past forgotten

Umesh S., an artist-in-residence at IAF 2025, is showcasing his observations of agrarian life through Seeds of Change, a large-scale installation of found, reclaimed and repurposed farming tools from Indian farming communities and histories. Inscribed with text and Bhojpuri poetry, the artwork, as per the concept note, “mourns the disappearance of vernacular wisdom”.

Also read: Asia Arts Game Changer Awards: Recognising innovation in contemporary art

Landscapes of colour

See the arresting works of German sculptor and painter Christian Achenbach, like this 2024 oil, acrylic and pastel on canvas Pekatan, at the Galerie Isa booth. The artist’s bold landscapes, according to the gallery’s note, reflect a unique synchronicity with multiple movements and ideologies—Modern, Dadaism and Cubism.

Figure heads

At the David Zwirner booth, be welcomed by a “multi-headed creature whose arms are pressed to its chest in prayer or panic”. The sculpture, titled Maybe Nothing Maybe Everything, set in patinated bronze is by New York-based artist Huma Bhabha, who draws references from the history of art, science fiction and horror films.

An alternative history

The Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, Jaipur, makes its debut with a set of works, which might hail from different periods of history, but are connected in spirit. In the late 1700s, court painter Ramji Das created watercolour portraits of palace workers, from guards to barbers and nursemaids. This is believed to be some of the earliest documentation of ordinary people in royal courts. Some time later Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II created similar portraits as photographs. And now the museum is showing these works as part of the showcase, ‘We the People’, at the fair.

Complexities of identity

Method gallery is presenting a mix of works around digital futurism, subversive nostalgia, speculative fiction, and more, at the fair through the works of Kunel Gaur, Priyesh Trivedi, Sage and Mohd Intiyaz. Especially interesting is ‘A Knot in the Thread’ by Sid Pattni, an Australian artist of Indian descent, who looks at identity and belonging within a post-colonial framework through painting and embroidery.

Also read: Manik Bagh: A forgotten marvel of modernist architecture

Reimagining the pichvai

Art revivalist Pooja Singhal carries forth her ethos of presenting the 400-year-old art form of Nathdwara pichvai in a contemporary idiom. The booth of Pichvai Tradition and Beyond presents a set of works, which feature subtle interventions to offer new perspectives on the art form. A key work at the booth is a greyscale rendition of the 24 Swaroop composition, which is a departure from the conventional style while maintaining the integrity of the symbolism.

An interplay of textures and materials

The Chanakya School of Craft is presenting ‘Towards Light’ at the fair, which is an intersection of textile, hand embroidery and stone carving. According to creative director Karishma Swali, the exhibit, while being rooted in indigenous craft traditions, dissolves the boundaries between the real and the metaphysical. “The series unveils an imagined universe where beings, their innate nature, and their ecosystems unfold in dialogue. This ongoing exploration is rendered through spontaneous and abstract forms…,” she adds. While the textile abstractions have been created on a custom-built Saori loom, the sculptural installations integrate woven organic cotton thread with bamboo structures. These are juxtaposed against hand-carved black stone figures. Together, these works examine the full spectrum of fibre-based materials.

A delicate balance

Pune-based Yogesh Ramkrishna has always delved into the rich Marathi theatre tradition for his works. He combines the performative aspect with his multidisciplinary practice, which includes printmaking, drawing and installation. The artist’s works often feature comic-like, dramatic beings with exaggerated features. One can see one such work at the Latitude 28 booth at the fair. Titled Rangit Talim, it refers to the final rehearsal of a performance. “This phase occurs in the absence of an audience, but the performers act as though they are in the actual performance, ensuring every detail aligns before the real presentation,” states the gallery note. It presents a moment between reality and performance—a balance between rehearsal and moment of truth.

Imagined futures

Artist Anindita Bhattacharya has been engaging with the idea of contemporary miniatures for long in her practice. In her solo showcase at the Gallery Threshold booth, she is showcasing three large pieces along with works from two small-format series. These bring together her work with jaali and paper-cut patterns, along with her meditations over the passage of time. The paintings—showing “private mythologies centred on insects and animals”—are Bhattacharya’s imagined futures expressed in the style of miniatures.

Also read: Artists take the farmlands into the gallery

Ecology in flux

Tarq is presenting a series of works by seven women artists—Nibha Sikander, Apnavi Makanji, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Rah Naqvi, Saubiya Chasmawala, Garima Gupta and Soghra Khurasani. Each of them has engaged with changing ecologies in a different manner, with some looking at archival exploration and others delving into fieldwork and personal memory. Especially interesting is Garima Gupta’s Bergenia Ciliata ,a pastel and charcoal work, in which the figure seems to have acquired a fantastical touch. The work is based on her research into medicinal plants that grow in the trans-Himalayan belt, feature in Ayurvedic, Yunani and Tibetan medicine systems, and are traded across the borders.

Embracing flaws

In a solo presentation, Viraj Khanna is looking at the many layers of flaws, quirks and complexities that make up every human being. Presented by Kalakriti Art Gallery, the series titled ‘Love me Love My Dog’ includes paintings and embroideries. For the first time the artist is showcasing khakha paintings, in which he transfers designs onto fabric by dusting charcoal powder and “serving as a guide for embroidery”.

Engagement with sculpture

GallerySKE is showing works from across disciplines by artists such as Avinash Veeraraghavan, Dia Mehhta Bhupal, Madhukar Mucharla and Rajyashri Goody. The gallery, in collaboration with The Third Line, Dubai, is also bringing Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s work to India for the first time. One of the works to catch is from Sudarshan Shetty’s Paper Moon—the artist’s 1995 solo exhibition. “Shetty recalls creating a series of objects seemingly on the verge of collapse — marking the beginning of his engagement with sculpture. Nearly three decades later, the presented work stands as a pivotal moment in his career, a thematic anchor where materiality gave way to what might now be seen as a preoccupation with ‘eternal residue’,” states the gallery note.

The everyday lives of migrants

Dhi Contemporary is presenting a solo booth of Arjun Das. The Kolkata-based artist is showing a new body of work from his ongoing series, ‘Some Ruins are Extant’, which explores the afterlives of materials and the stories that they hold within. He has been drawing connections between material such as metal, stone, coal, roof tiles and asphalt with the internal worlds of a displaced labourer and migrant worker in the city.