BOOKS & ART

The first is that modern abstract art is doing something real and the people who made it were often thinking very seriously about what they were trying to do. The second is that the market for this art has almost nothing to do with the art itself and operates on entirely different principles. Understanding both parts does not require any particular background in art history. It requires only the willingness to take the question seriously.

There is a relationship between art and fashion that has been described so many times and in so many ways that the description itself has become a kind of reflex, something reached for automatically whenever a designer name-drops a painter or a museum stages a collaboration with a luxury house or a runway show is held in a gallery space with catalog essays written by curators who are very careful about how much of their credibility they are lending and to whom.

Fashion. Architecture. Watches. Cars. Interiors. Photography. Design Philosophy. One book from each world that belongs in every serious collection.

Tucked inside Khotachi Wadi, one of Mumbai's few surviving heritage villages with Portuguese-British roots, 47A is currently showing Shadows of Empire, a two-person exhibition featuring Kolkata-based artist Jit Chowdhury and Mumbai-based photographer and painter Kaushal Parikh. The show opened on March 21st and runs until April 19th. The two artists come from entirely different backgrounds and work in entirely different mediums, which is precisely what makes the pairing inter

Sanya Malik's Black Cube Gallery and Shantanu Sharma present Line as Witness, a solo exhibition by Bhopal-based artist Yusuf, running from 29th March to 11th April 2026 at Sunder Nagar, New Delhi. The show brings together acrylic paintings, mixed media explorations and sculptural forms accumulated over decades of practice, and is open to all by prior appointment between 11am and 6pm. Yusuf has spent his career treating the line not as a formal device but as the fundamental un

Deepika Khurana’s Juggler , published by Vishwakarma Publications, enters the space of Indian fiction through the contained world of a travelling circus. At its center is Bobo, a dwarf who works as a clown in the Triumph Circus, performing humor for audiences while carrying an unresolved personal history. The circus offers him visibility, but not necessarily freedom from his past. The narrative gradually reveals that Bobo is also Sikander, a name connected to an earlier life

The Dragon’s Shadow by Balakrishna Kamath is positioned as an intelligence-driven political thriller, drawing from the author’s professional background and familiarity with security environments. India's strategic concerns, particularly in relation to China's expanding geopolitical influence, set the backdrop for the novel. The narrative follows intelligence operations, surveillance structures, and the internal functioning of agencies tasked with assessing and responding to

Begum Qudsia Rasul holds a distinct place in India’s political history as the only Muslim woman who was part of the Constituent Assembly. Her memoir, first published in 2001 and later reissued by Roli Books, documents her life across princely India, the years leading up to Independence, and her role in the making of the Indian Constitution. The book is structured as a personal and political record, tracing her journey from an aristocratic upbringing to active participation in

Scott Mescudi has introduced a new body of visual artwork under the name Scotty Ramon, presenting his first solo exhibition titled Echoes of the Past at Galerie Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. The exhibition marks his formal entry into contemporary art through painting and sculpture, extending a creative practice that began privately less than two years ago. The exhibition brings together more than 50 works, primarily acrylic paintings on canvas, alongside a single sculptural piece.

Thapar Contemporary, New Delhi, is presenting The Engineering of Rubble , a group exhibition featuring 18 works by 11 contemporary European artists. Curated by Jasone Miranda-Bilbao and Vaibhav Raj Shah, the exhibition brings together practices that engage with fragmentation, incompleteness, and material endurance as central conditions within contemporary art. The exhibition includes works by Ali Glover, Ana Genovés, Charo Garaigorta, Damien Meade, Ian Dawson, Ian Gouldstone,

Thapar Gallery presents Memory | Remains , an exhibition bringing together works by Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte , on view until 28 February 2026. The exhibition approaches Indian modernism through two distinct artistic practices that continue to engage with memory, history, and everyday experience. Rather than positioning the artists as canonical figures, Memory | Remains treats modernism as an ongoing and evolving inquiry. Through Khanna’s figurative language and Ko

At 47A Khotachi Wadi, the quiet heritage precinct becomes a stitched archive of the city in Echoes of Bombay , a hand-embroidery exhibition by Kailash Poojary, on view from 13 February to 15 March. The space transforms into a tactile map of Bombay, where architecture, labour, faith, and memory are rendered not in stone or ink, but patiently in thread. Conceived over a year, Echoes of Bombay reimagines the city’s layered past through a series of hand-embroidered works that tr

Lenscape Kerala, the national travelling photography exhibition currently touring across India, arrives in Mumbai from 12 to 14 February 2026 at Jehangir Art Gallery . Presented as a visual journey through one of India’s most layered regions, the exhibition brings together photography, travel, and cultural documentation in a concise, accessible format. Featuring 100 curated photographs by 10 leading travel and media photographers from across India , Lenscape Kerala offers a

Gallery Dotwalk inaugurates its new space in Defence Colony, New Delhi with Drifting Through Quiet Veins , an immersive exhibition that reimagines the gallery as a sensorial environment where sound, material, and image converge. The exhibition brings together eight contemporary artists whose practices move beyond conventional studio formats into experiential encounters shaped by memory, labour, landscape, and embodied presence. The exhibition features Abdulla PA, Amjum Rizve,

This winter, Ahmedabad’s Kanoria Centre for Arts becomes the setting for a quiet but compelling cultural crossover. Homegrown Art x Artisanal Fragrance , on view at Urmila Art Gallery from 30 January to 1 February 2026, brings together Indian folk and contemporary art with a curated sensory experience rooted in fragrance. The three-day exhibition presents a carefully selected collection of certified original artworks, priced between ₹3,000 and ₹3,00,000, making the show acces

At India Art Fair 2026, KYNKYNY Art Gallery presents a tightly curated booth that brings together three contemporary practices rooted in material, process, and physical intelligence. Featuring the works of Sandilya Theuerkauf, Meenal Singh, and Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy, the presentation unfolds as a conversation between sculpture and painting, where material is not treated as a surface or medium, but as an active agent in shaping meaning. Located at Booth L08 at the NSIC Exh

Method presents RITES , a solo exhibition by Berlin– and New York–based artist and technologist Alida Sun , on view from 31 January to 15 March 2026 in New Delhi. The exhibition examines technology through an alternative lens, placing code in conversation with ritual, embroidery, mirrorwork, and collective labour. At the centre of RITES is Sun’s long-term daily coding practice. For more than 2,300 consecutive days, she has written a new generative artwork every day, treatin

Threshold Art Gallery presents Intimate Terrains , a two-person exhibition featuring works by Shanti Swaroopini (India) and Michal Glikson (Australia), on view from 18 January to 28 February 2026. The exhibition traces a resonant relationship between two artists whose practices diverge in form yet converge in ethos. Both share formative training at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara—an environment that shaped their commitment to material expe

There is a different weight to an artist returning home, especially when the work arrives carrying three decades of practice. The Long Now of Us , a solo exhibition by Jagannath Panda , curated by Sibdas Sengupta , marks Panda’s first solo presentation in his hometown of Bhubaneswar. Opening at Lalit Kala Akademi , Regional Centre, the exhibition frames this homecoming not as nostalgia, but as a measured re-engagement with place, memory, and time. Presented by EO Odisha, The

History is often remembered through documents and monuments. Dzieci Maharadży: Maharaja’s Children – A Passage of Kindness and Respect approaches it differently, by placing memory in motion. Conceived by Bharatanatyam dancer and cultural storyteller Apeksha Niranjan , the project translates a lesser-known humanitarian chapter of World War II into performance, allowing it to be experienced rather than recounted. The Bhopal presentation of the project takes place on 18 January