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We Were Always Neighbours at Asia Now 2025, Curated by Sahil Arora
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- Oct 12
- 3 min read
Borders may divide land, but they can never sever memory.
We Were Always Neighbours, curated by Sahil Arora, Gallery Director of Method (India), and presented at Asia NOW 2025 at the Monnaie de Paris, is an exhibition that will bring together emerging artists from India and Pakistan in an unguarded act of artistic kinship.
The project starts with the understanding that the modern nation-states of South Asia emerged from a state of rupture. Yet, in the history of movement, loss, and common experiences, the region still feels like a connected space, filled with emotions and ideas that go beyond the political borders. The exhibition, We Were Always Neighbours, is not intended to be a regional showcase. It is a quiet refusal to see identity through the lens of division, an offering from a region that remains in tension yet deeply intertwined through its acts of creation.
Within the fair’s Third Space section, the exhibition creates a “borderless corridor,” shaped not by policy but by human gesture and artistic dialogue. The participating artists Fatima Kaleem and Shamir Iqtidar from Pakistan, and Shivangi Kalra, Gargi Chandola, Darshika Singh, and Viraj Khanna from India bring together intimate worlds of ornamentation, mythology, and feminine space. Through paintings and small sculptures, they chart internal geographies of resistance, giving form to the invisible lines that connect rather than divide.
Beyond the walls of the gallery, We Were Always Neighbours unfolds into the courtyards and corridors of the Monnaie de Paris through a series of site-specific installations. Artists Tarini Sethi, Sehaj Malik, Kunel Gaur, Mohd. Intiyaz, Sajid Wajid Shaikh, and Jibran Shahid respond to the site through scale, material, and architectural memory, transforming its historic setting into a living landscape of reflection and disruption. Some works arrive folded and intimate—unstretched canvases, drawings, and small handmade objects—while others are built on-site, ephemeral and performative, existing only in their moment of making.
The project also reflects the collaborative spirit that defines Method’s practice. Several participating artists are presented in association with Rajiv Menon Contemporary (Los Angeles), Tao Art Gallery (Mumbai), and Art Manzil (nomadic), creating a network of exchange that extends the dialogue beyond national boundaries into a shared ecosystem of support and imagination.
France, long a space for South Asian artistic exchange from the colonial dialogues of Pondicherry to modern collaborations in film, literature, and diplomacy, provides an apt setting for this exhibition. In its courtyards, artists from across the subcontinent find not a stage, but a meeting ground. We Were Always Neighbours continues this legacy of conversation, presenting emerging practices that speak in many languages—visual, emotional, and political—yet share a single instinct: to reach across borders and remain in relation.
As Sahil Arora notes, “We Were Always Neighbours is rooted in an ethos of connection across borders, across practices, across disciplines. Asia NOW’s commitment to host a presentation of this nature, with a spotlight on young emerging voices, is remarkable and a refreshing change from traditional industry practices.”
The participating artists include Ammama Malik, Darshika Singh, Fatima Kaleem Khan, Gargi Chandola, Jibran Shahid, Kunel Gaur, Mohd. Intiyaz, Sajid Wajid Shaikh, Sehaj Malik, Shamir Iqtidar, Shivangi Kalra, Tarini Sethi (via Rajiv Menon Contemporary), Tazeen Fatima (via Art Manzil), and Viraj Khanna (via Tao Art Gallery). Together, they form a constellation of voices that insist on dialogue even when politics grows silent.
At its core, We Were Always Neighbours is a reminder that art, unlike borders, resists containment. It moves quietly through memory and gesture, creating new languages of belonging and reminding us that before we were divided, we were always neighbours.
Exhibition Details
Dates: October 21–26,
Venue: Monnaie de Paris
Curator: Sahil Arora, Gallery Director, Method (India)
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