India Art Fair 2026: A Comprehensive Guide to Artistic Highlights
Held at the NSIC Okhla Ground until February 8, India Art Fair 2026 presents a vibrant tapestry of artistic expression with 135 exhibitors. This event spans from revered modern masters to emerging talents, featuring participatory installations, photography, experimental material practices, and folk narratives. Here is an in-depth, section-wise exploration of the fair's most notable works and artists.
Moderns: Icons and Masterpieces
At Crayon Art Gallery's booth, visitors can experience the powerful works of Somnath Hore, a Bengal master renowned for his expressionist prints and sculptural forms that poignantly depict human anguish and resilience. Hore's pieces re-contextualize rural life and struggles during the Bengal famine, offering a stark documentation of historical realities for today's audience.
The modernist titan MF Husain is prominently featured across multiple spaces. At Aicon Contemporary, his work Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne pays homage to filmmaker Satyajit Ray, while Art Exposure showcases his iconic Untitled (horses), an acrylic on canvas piece that captures his dynamic style.
Chennai's Ashvita gallery brings forth stalwarts of the Madras Movement, including Velu Viswanadhan, P Perumal, and Achuthan Kudallur, all alumni of the Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai. Their abstract modernism, characterized by vibrant color, texture, and rhythmic lines, provides an early narrative of South Indian abstraction.
Dhoomimal Gallery delves further back in time with works from artists like Krishen Khanna, KK Hebbar's Untitled from the "Rocket" Series, and Jamini Roy's tempera on cloth, highlighting the rich heritage of Indian art.
International Artists: Global Dialogues
Performance art legend Marina Abramović makes her debut collaboration with Nature Morte at the fair, featuring photographs from her "Energy Clothes" Series, such as Energy Hat (gardening) and Energy Hat (reading). These works lay the groundwork for her upcoming "Art Dubai Digital" show, offering insights into her exploration of energy and human interaction.
Ai Weiwei's Iron Root series, showcased at Nature Morte, consists of large-scale sculptures cast from weathered tree roots using an ancient "lost-wax" technique, often covered in a rust patina, reflecting themes of nature and transformation.
The Italian gallery Galleria Continua presents major works, including Ai Weiwei's Grape, an installation of 27 stools arranged to resemble grapes from a distance, and Anish Kapoor's Non-Object Black, a deceptively minimal black surface that reveals a bulging form only when viewed from specific angles, meditating on space and perception.
Experimenting With Form
At Gallery Maskara, Jaipur-based artist Prashant Pandey presents an installation crafted from 3,50,000 discarded cigarette butts, collected over five years from pavements and street corners. These carefully woven buds form suspended sculptures that evoke organic skins and cosmic topographies, commenting on waste and beauty.
Juhikadevi Bhanjdeo's installation River, presented by Latitude 28 gallery, uses steel safety pins and cotton velvet clothes to explore textiles, motifs, and memories held by fabric, building on her earlier works with safety pins at the Delhi Contemporary Art Week.
Presented by DMINTI New York, Sonal Ambani's The Last Stamp reflects on the changing nature of communication. Triggered by Denmark's removal of public post boxes, this stainless-steel timepiece postbox invites visitors to write postcards, highlighting the human impulse to connect in a digital age.
Contemporary Pulse
Subodh Gupta's Drift of a Star at Nature Morte transforms everyday domestic utensils into a celestial field, with a central vessel holding space while smaller items like glasses and spoons descend and align. This work extends his signature exploration of ordinary objects scaled into monumental presences, interrogating identity, globalization, and cultural memory.
At Gallery Espace, a wall-sized work by Manjunath Kamath and outdoor paintings by Vasudevan Akkitham from the Covid years draw attention. Meanwhile, LN Tallur's sculpture at Chemould, works by Sudarshan Shetty and Rajyashri Goody at Gallery Ske, and Pradip Das's microscopic piece at Emami Art attract queues of visitors.
Shailesh BR's solo presentation includes the interactive machine You Will Become A Star, where a pixelated panel erupts with yellow lights in response to movement, engaging audiences in a dynamic artistic experience.
Outdoor Works and Public Projects
Judy Chicago's outdoor installation What If Women Ruled the World, created in collaboration with Maria Grazia Chiuri of DIOR, serves as a revolutionary call-and-response to invite global allies to share ideas and build a community supporting gender rights. This participatory project adds a bold conceptual frame to the fair's landscape, inspiring perspectives on a different society.
Patiala-based artist Kulpreet Singh reflects on Punjab's agricultural practices with an installation that inquires into animal, fungal, and plant species facing extinction. Extinction Archive features over 900 instances from the IUCN Red List, inviting visitors to contribute to this growing list, raising awareness about biodiversity loss.
The Charpai Project, conceptualized by Ayush Kasliwal for the Serendipity Arts Festival 2018, returns with a digital intervention by AI artist Goji. This installation navigates a lattice of stacked charpais, echoing the movement of a Snakes and Ladders board, encouraging visitors to climb, recline, and connect in spontaneous and reflective ways.
Art Discussions and Workshops
Just inside the entrance, the KNMA Inclusion Lab sessions focus on accessibility, art equity, and inclusive practices, providing a thoughtful kickoff for audience engagement. Curated by LAND and supported by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, the Learning Space hosts workshops on pedagogy, ecology, and sustainability.
For those eager to delve deeper, the fair offers a variety of talks and art tours tailored to diverse interests, ensuring an enriching experience for all attendees.
