OPENING DOORS TO THE WORLD OF ART
After over two years, the India Art Fair is ready to welcome connoisseurs of art
The India Art Fair (IAF) has been a regular fixture on the calendars of artists and art lovers alike. But this time, the event is all the more special, for it is returning after a two-year hiatus necessitated by the Covid-19 crisis. Set to camp at NSIC Grounds, the art event, in its 13th edition, will treat visitors to a showcase that features works of 77 Indian and international exhibitors, albeit with care and caution.
“The biggest canvas at the fair and in Delhi, the fair facade, will be a major standout, and has been created by young artist Anshuka Mahapatra using the colours of summer and phrases in seven Indian languages to express the beauty of every day… We’ll also have a number of outdoor projects, including a 50-feet high mural by the transartist collective Aravani Art Project, titled The Future is Femme, imaging a binary-free world,” says fair director Jaya Asokan. She goes on to mention how the pandemic has impacted and seeped into contemporary art in the past two years: “Be it Mahesh Baliga’s glimmering quotidian scenes from the interiors of India or Sudhir Patwardhan’s depiction of the internal turmoil experienced by artists or Divya Singh’s haunting scenes of domestic spaces, in which many of us have felt trapped.”
Artist Manisha Gera Baswani, who is exhibiting a pin drawing, Conference of Thoughts at the Gallery Espace booth, says, “The idea came from the space of healing and repair. I was the caregiver for a family member, and that’s where I got the idea of pins piercing paper from. I felt the act of (causing) pain is an act of repair, because incessantly piercing the paper also made it more beautiful.”
The 2022 edition of the fair will not only have talks by NFT experts in its auditorium for the first time, but will also see seven Indian galleries and many artists debuting. A 30-work retrospective on view by Ojas Art will make Mithila artist Santosh Kumar Das one of the debuting artists. “It’s exciting for artists to debut at the fair and get their work introduced more widely in the art circuit,” he says.
“The fair is key to supporting the gallery ecosystem in India. It serves multiple roles, including engaging new collectors, giving much-needed exposure, both nationally as well as internationally, to the contemporary and modern art scene in India,” notes Amal Allana, director of Art Heritage Gallery, that is hosting Sunanda Khajuria’s solo show I Have Lost Me: Birds of Passage — one of the many simultaneous and supporting IAF parallel exhibitions going on at different venues in the city.