A New Art Address In Fort: KYNKYNY Makes Its Mumbai Debut

The first thing to notice about KYNKYNY’s new Mumbai gallery is that the art is not the only thing worth looking at. Before you reach the exhibition rooms, there is an old building to contend with, complete with timber, brass fittings and a lift that has an unlikely royal connection. It is the sort of setting that makes a contemporary art gallery feel less like a sealed-off exhibition space and more like another layer of Mumbai’s history.

KYNKYNY, which began in Bengaluru in 2004, has opened its second permanent gallery in Fort, taking up the fourth floor of Gool Mansion on Homji Street, close to Horniman Circle. The move marks an important new chapter for the gallery, which has spent more than two decades developing a programme centred on Indian contemporary art and nurturing artists at different stages of their careers.

The choice of address is particularly fitting. Fort has always been a neighbourhood where different versions of Mumbai coexist. Heritage architecture, commercial offices, galleries, luxury stores, street vendors and restaurants occupy the same compact stretch of the city. KYNKYNY is now another part of that mix.

An Old Building, Reworked

The gallery’s interiors have an unusual story of their own. When the team first encountered the fourth-floor premises, it was very much a work in progress. Sections of the space had been dismantled, but its existing configuration offered something that a purpose-built gallery might not: character.

The floor is arranged around a long passage, with rooms branching away from it. Instead of flattening this unusual layout, KYNKYNY retained it and adapted the rooms for displaying art. The restoration also brought some of the building’s original details back into view.

Under layers of paint, the team found Burma teak in the doors and frames. The original brass hardware was carefully restored, while old fittings were retained rather than replaced with modern replicas. The result is an interior where the age of the building remains visible without competing with the artwork.

The lift is perhaps the most intriguing detail. Built using rosewood and teak and finished with brass inlay, it is believed to have come from a maharaja’s palace after an earthquake. In another setting, such a lift might be treated as an ornamental curiosity. Here, it feels like a natural extension of the building’s story.

Why Mumbai Became The Next Step

KYNKYNY did not arrive in Mumbai without an existing audience. Over the years, the gallery had developed a sizeable base of collectors in the city, while art fairs and its online presence helped it build relationships far beyond Bengaluru.

That digital reach was particularly useful in changing the gallery’s relationship with geography. What began as a Bengaluru gallery gradually acquired clients across India and internationally. Mumbai, in particular, became an important market, making a permanent presence increasingly logical.

The city also offers a different kind of artistic environment. Mumbai’s galleries are spread through neighbourhoods that encourage audiences to discover art almost as part of their everyday movement around the city. Its established network of galleries and cultural organisations has helped make contemporary art more accessible to a wider audience.

For KYNKYNY, the Mumbai space is therefore both an expansion and an opportunity to experiment. The gallery plans to retain its Bengaluru base rather than turn Mumbai into a replacement, allowing the two spaces to develop their own identities while sharing artists and programming.

For now, another Indian gallery is not immediately on the cards. If the gallery does eventually establish a third location, Delhi is the city that makes the most sense to the founders.

Six Artists Meet The City

The Mumbai gallery opens with The Urban Biome, an exhibition that brings together six artists: Krisha Bhuva, Hemanth Kumar Mavuri, N Divya, Nivedita Shinde, Simran Yagyik and Sunil K.

Rather than presenting a conventional portrait of the city, the exhibition considers the environments people create and everything that becomes part of them. Homes, streets, furniture, animals, insects, memories, and architecture all enter the conversation.

That gives the exhibition plenty of room to move. Bhuva's works focus on street cats, using silk as the surface for observing these familiar urban residents. Mavuri's woodcut prints of peacocks connect the natural world with his own experience of moving away from his village near Visakhapatnam to study art in Vadodara. The bird became something he encountered only after leaving home, turning it into a marker of personal transition as much as a subject.

Elsewhere, N Divya works with objects associated with domestic life, including inherited clothing, furniture and utensils. These everyday possessions become repositories of memory. Nivedita Shinde, whose background in architecture informs her practice, moves between painting, drawing, stitching, writing and found materials. Sunil K looks at the smaller creatures that inhabit human interiors, drawing attention to the life that exists alongside us but is often ignored.

The six practices are different, but they meet around a shared idea: a city is not defined only by its buildings or its people. It is also shaped by what gets carried into homes, what appears on streets and what lives alongside us.

More Than A Second Address

That idea extends beyond the exhibition. KYNKYNY has spent 22 years building a reputation around emerging talent, at a time when India's contemporary art landscape has become considerably more visible and commercially active.

The gallery's original purpose was to create a platform for artists who were still finding their footing. While its programme now includes more established names, that commitment remains central. The Mumbai gallery gives its artists another audience in one of the country's most important art markets, while also bringing work from Bengaluru into a city with its own strong cultural vocabulary.

There is an international dimension too. Indian artists have benefited from growing interest among collectors overseas, particularly within the diaspora, and KYNKYNY expects appreciation for Indian contemporary art to extend further into global markets.

But perhaps the best introduction to the new gallery is simpler. Visit the exhibition, notice the artworks, then take your time getting back downstairs. Look at the timber, the brass, the old lift and the building around you. Step out onto Homji Street and walk towards Horniman Circle.

Mumbai has a habit of putting history and reinvention on the same street. KYNKYNY has simply chosen to make that tension part of its new home.

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