Vartaman, a Solo Exhibition by Yashika Sugandh at Bikaner House

Time usually rushes past us in traffic, in deadlines, and in the noise of cities. But inside Vartaman, time stretches. You notice the curve of a branch, the hush of a twig, and the play of creatures imagined into being. Yashika Sugandh does not ask you to look at her art; she asks you to dwell in it.

Presented by Sanya Malik, founder and director of Black Cube Gallery, Vartaman opens at the Living Traditions Centre, Bikaner House, New Delhi. It is less an exhibition and more a diary, a series of meditations painted into being, urging us to pause and pay attention to what we so often rush past.

Branches appear again and again in Sugandh’s works, not as ornaments but as reminders of shade, sustenance, and continuity. Her brush, trained in the meticulous tradition of Indian miniature painting, creates whimsical yet profound worlds. Snails carry giraffes, turtles bloom into tomatoes, and monkeys snack on watermelon tails. These hybrids are playful on the surface, but they are never shallow. They remind us of the possibility of coexistence, of what it might mean to imagine differently.

Sugandh’s practice does not simply depict nature; it collaborates with it. Twigs, wasp nests, butterfly cocoons, and found objects become part of her visual language, stitched into compositions that feel both delicate and radical. Each fine line, each organic fragment, asks a question: What if trees could grow through furniture? What if machines could host new life? What if every being had exactly what it needed to survive?

Vartaman embodies an ethic close to the Bhagavad Gita—humility, tolerance, and selfless service. Much like trees that give without asking, Sugandh’s work offers a kind of visual generosity. It teaches us to soften, to notice, and to remember that the present is not fleeting but alive.

Born in Kolkata in 1993, raised in New Delhi, and now based in Noida, Yashika Sugandh has been drawing since childhood. She holds a BFA and MFA in painting from Amity University, yet her practice has always felt more like a diary than a discipline rooted in memory, movement, and empathy. Her works have been shown at India Art Fair, Art Mumbai, Jehangir Art Gallery, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Lalit Kala Akademi, ICCR, IGNCA, and more. Internationally, she has exhibited with platforms like Emergent Art Space.

In 2024, she was invited by Hermès to design artwork for their flagship store in Mumbai, a recognition that her imagination resonates far beyond the gallery. She has also received the City Award for Delhi (2017) by the Prafulla Dahanukar Art Foundation and the All-India Merit Grant for Lockdown Art (2021).

But prestige is not what anchors her work. What anchors it is reverence for trees, for creatures, and for the fragile balance we are dangerously tilting. Her compositions are speculative and poetic at once, asking us to imagine a world where growth is possible everywhere, even in what we abandon.

At Bikaner House, and later at Black Cube Gallery in Delhi, Vartaman becomes a space where art and ecology speak the same language. It is not an escape, not nostalgia, but continuity. A chance to stay a little longer with the fragile present, to breathe with it, to carry its questions out into the city.

Vartaman – A Solo Exhibition by Yashika Sugandh

Venue: Living Traditions Centre, Bikaner House, New Delhi

Date: 27^th September – 1^st October 2025

Timings: 11 AM – 7 PM

Extended Venue: Black Cube Gallery, New Delhi

Till: 31st October

Presented by: Black Cube Gallery, New Delhi